Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
by PaulNewmanAndARideHome
Summary: 1965 ended quietly, and the world kept spinning. Four years later, Sandy returns to face a town that's moved on from the tatters of its past, but she's confronted by the lies she's told, and this time she can't run before she has to pick up the pieces.
1. The Sound of Silence

**Author's note:** **Okay, so I wanted to say straight off the bat that I know that people aren't big on, like, any stories even remotely involving Sandy, so thanks so much for giving this a try! I felt like there was more to her story, so now I get to write it all unraveling four years later. And there's a lot more going on than just Sandy's return, too, so there's some incentive to keep reading. ;)**

 **Ahem, anyway:**

 ** _Don't Think Twice, It's Alright_**

 _Chapter One_

 _The Sound of Silence_

* * *

It was mercifully quiet in the car when she started to recognize the horizon.

The dusk was cool but not cold and the wind from earlier in the day had died down to a whisper. Dust danced along the sides of the road, the twilight painted the horizon gold, and it was uncharacteristically _quiet_ as her blue Austin Mini Cooper rambled its way along the cracked road.

It really was a beautiful night, and she almost laughed at the injustice.

She'd crossed into Oklahoma a few miles back and was beginning to seriously consider making a run for the Mexican border. Another ambiguously dim restaurant flew by and she wondered distantly how hard it could really be to disappear and restart everything from the bottom up.

She knew it had to be easier than this.

The car lurched over a pothole and a small body stirred in the back of the car, and Sandy had to bite back a curse.

"...there yet?" A sleep-dazed voice slurred over the rustling of blankets.

Sandy surveyed her son in the mirror and laughed. His light hair stuck up in tufts after being squished against the bags sharing the back seat with him, and he wore a rumpled expression.

"Go back to sleep," she chided softly. "I'll tell you when we get there."

She watched him take a moment to consider the proposal. Finally, he mumbled a content "'kay" around a yawn and burrowed back into his nest of blankets.

Soft snoring filled the car, and her face twisted into a wry smile. It was quiet again, and she almost felt bad. But a person could only spend so long in the car with a screaming four-year-old before a car crash started to seem like a merciful possibility, and she'd reached that point about two hours out from Tampa city.

Quiet was a commodity among mothers, which wasn't something she'd ever thought she'd have figured out at twenty years old.

Sandy waited until the breathing from the back seat evened out before putting in an old cassette. She hummed along to a Simon and Garfunkel song that she'd been given a vinyl of during her sophomore year and kept her eyes trained forward on the dusty road, reveling in the quiet comfort of the night.

The twang of a once-loved song filled the car, and she tried her best not to think about the town still stained with the lies she'd left in her wake.

So she spent the night reveling in the quiet, and when she passed the sign welcoming her to Tulsa, the lack of sound was deafening.

 **. . .**

It was almost 5 o'clock when the dusty Ford veered into the driveway after the drive from the county jail.

Ponyboy watched the group file in, silent and sullen, as he weighed his odds of becoming involved in the oncoming shouting match. Eventually, he settled on standing at the edge of the group as Darry broke the silence.

" _Three_ times, Steve." He ran a hand down his face and stared Steve down with a glare that Ponyboy knew all too well.

"I can count," Steve mumbled, glaring at the floor and edging toward the door.

Ponyboy tried to be invested in the conversation, but it was hard to care when he'd been hearing the same argument for the past year.

Darry shook his head at Steve, who was fishing in his pockets for a lighter. "Then how'd you end up with the fuzz on your trail this time?" he challenged. Steve shrugged and fumbled with a cigarette, and Darry scoffed. "That's three times this _month -_ How many more times do you think you can get hauled in before they stick you in the cooler for good?"

Steve bristled, but Soda took his cue to intervene. "Leave it, Dar." He strode toward the kitchen. "Ain't worth it right now."

He received a pointed look for his troubles, but Darry relented. "You get busted again, I'll continue this conversation," he warned.

Steve took a long drag of a cigarette. "Yeah, fine," he growled. "Ain't like Evie's gonna be around, and someone's always gotta end up screamin' at me."

Soda looked up from his rummaging through the cabinets. "You and Evie have a fight?"

Ponyboy almost snorted. Did he need to ask?

Steve picked at the oil underneath his fingernails. "More like she went off at me over nothin', but yeah."

Ponyboy considered Steve's feigned nonchalance and guessed that it hadn't been over nothing, but he knew better than to weigh in. Instead, he turned to Soda. "You still supposed to make dinner tonight?"

Soda emerged from the cabinet and spared an impish glance at Darry. "So long as no one's stoppin' me, I am." He victoriously snatched a box of spaghetti from the top shelf.

Ponyboy quietly worried on behalf of the spaghetti; the last time Soda had cooked dinner, it had been inexplicably dyed blue. Still, Darry sighed in resignation. "Your turn to cook, ain't it?"

Soda grinned and shook the box before opening the icebox to search for God only knew what. "Sure is."

The next ten minutes were filled with the usual din of Soda's cooking, but Ponyboy could feel the tension still clinging to the air like a fog. It had been like that a lot lately.

The past few months, he'd been starting to lose track of whether Steve was in or out of the cooler, and he didn't think that it was for any reason other than that someone in the gang always had to be ready to explode, and they were down a guy for the role. The four years since Dally's death had been heading in that direction, but things had come to a head when Steve's old man kicked him out for good nine months ago. Ponyboy guessed that Steve was doing his best to take up residence at the county jail instead of his folks' place.

A horn sounded from outside, and Ponyboy winced on behalf of the neighbors, who already weren't their biggest fans. The clock in the living room ticked like a countdown, but he couldn't figure out what it was counting to as the gang clanged around the kitchen in somehow detrimental efforts to help with dinner.

Two-bit traipsed into the room and stopped to consider the group. "Boy howdy, you could trip on the tension in here," he declared loudly as he slung his jacket over a chair.

Ponyboy laughed, because of course that shattered whatever tension he'd been talking about, and soon Soda was unceremoniously shoving plates at people as Darry tried to convince them that the dinner table was, in fact, there for a reason.

They made it a whole five minutes into dinner before Evie stormed through the door, which was marginally longer than Ponyboy had expected.

"Steven Peter Randall," Evie snarled, marching toward his seat at the end of the table in all her bleached blonde glory, "why in hell did I just hear from _Tim_ that you were hauled in last week?"

Ponyboy was reminded suddenly of something he'd heard at school, and he felt a familiar dread settle in his stomach. He shifted in his chair and wondered if they should give Evie and Steve the room.

"Because last I checked, you didn't have any business knowin'," Steve said with a condescending tone that Ponyboy knew wasn't going to defuse the situation.

Evie huffed. "Because we're broken up?" Steve motioned vaguely in agreement, and she scoffed. "That's bullshit and we both know it."

Ponyboy heard Two-Bit cackle from across the table. "She ain't wrong."

He couldn't decide whether Evie's or Steve's glare was scarier, but the combined force was enough to shut Two-Bit up real fast.

Steve crossed his arms as he stood up and stared Evie down for a second, and she held his gaze. "Are you un-breaking up with me?" he demanded flatly after a beat of quiet.

Evie rolled her darkly outlined eyes. "If you'll be out of jail long enough to keep a relationship goin'."

That seemed to settle it, but Ponyboy still wondered what that made Steve's answer.

Steve glared at the table in general as he sat down, and Ponyboy fidgeted in his seat, because seeing Evie had reminded him of something, and he really didn't want to be the one to break the news. "I'll get the plates," he mumbled as he stood up and his chair scraped the wooden floor.

Darry casted him a suspicious glance. "It ain't your night to do that."

Ponyboy shrugged it off and collected the plates with a series of clatters. "'S'okay."

As he hurried into the kitchen, he heard Two-Bit mutter a "what's up with the kid?" behind him, which he only sort of resented.

He shook his head; he was almost eighteen, and he was still 'the kid.' He'd spent the last two years complaining about it, and Soda had only told him that it just wasn't something he'd grow out of.

He dunked the first plate into uncomfortably hot water and tried to figure out the best strategy to bring up the news. Maybe he was kidding himself; maybe that crap he'd heard about time healing all wounds was right, and he shouldn't be so worried. But four years didn't seem long enough, and Soda hadn't been on an actual date for years, and Ponyboy wasn't sure that this was the sort of thing that time could erase.

At the table, the group was talking in more relaxed tones than they had been, but Ponyboy got the feeling that Evie wouldn't be sticking around. He was almost finished with the dishes when he heard the tell-tale scraping of a chair, followed by Evie's voice.

"I'd better beat it - my folks'll think I got jumped or somethin'."

Ponyboy was already considering how long he'd have to wait after she left to break the news as the obligatory chorus of goodbyes filled the air.

She strode into the kitchen and flashed Ponyboy a grin. "See ya, kid- Oh!" She turned back towards the group at the table "Have y'all heard?"

Ponyboy set down his dish towel and cautiously approached the table as she went on, more wary than he thought he'd ever seen Evie.

"See, I was with some of the girls yesterday," she said slowly, like she was already regretting where it was going, and Ponyboy sighed, because he _knew_ where it was going.

"And they got to talkin' about the shit that went down a few years ago, and that got 'em talkin' about the shit goin' down now." Evie bit her lip and glanced once at Soda. "And they said Sandy Owens is back in town, 'cause her old man had a heart attack."

Ponyboy counted four solid seconds of silence before anyone thought to speak, and for once he was grateful for Evie's bluntly honest nature, because he'd have tried to dull the blow, and that wasn't possible.

It was Steve who finally broke the silence, and he spoke gruffly, but Ponyboy noticed that he kept a careful eye on Sodapop. "Ain't like this changes anything." There were a few cautious nods around the table, and Steve laughed bitterly. "She'll be outa here before the past catches up to her."

Sodapop was studying the table, tracing his finger over one of the knots in the wood, but he glanced up to see the stares casted at him. "Yeah," he sighed, nodding like he'd already made himself believe it, "she will be."

Ponyboy, for all his imagination, couldn't quite make himself believe that.

 **. . .**

Sandy stood in the park and pretended not to notice the empty space where the fountain used to be.

"He has a hard head, doesn't he?"

Sandy glanced at her mother and laughed.

Her blue eyes were fixed wryly on her grandson, who seemed to have face planted off the edge of a slide but was fast recovering. Her blonde hair was more streaked with gray than Sandy remembered and the crow's feet around her eyes were more prominent, but she looked at her daughter with the same weary fondness as she always had, and Sandy still didn't feel good about being back, but she felt better.

She'd been back in town for a week and her mother had already pegged James as both an angel and a source of unending mischief, which wasn't far from the truth. Linda Owens was an empathetic person, but Sandy was certain she'd reached her capacity for worrying about children's playground scrapes about fifteen years ago.

James was already on his feet, squealing and yelling something about Superman as he rejoined the game of tag, and she laughed. "He has a hard head," she agreed, and added silently, _don't ask where he gets it from._

It was a quiet day, and the park had been left to smiling lovers and screaming kids, just as it always had been.

Her mother watched her carefully out of the corner of her eye, and Sandy felt like she knew where the conversation was headed.

"You been to the hospital yet?" She eventually asked with the measured ease of someone trying too hard to be casual.

Sandy sighed and kept her eyes trained on James, because he had a talent for injuring himself in the time it took her to blink. "No. I haven't."

The only response was a nod, and Sandy decided to let it rest at that.

She hadn't seen her father for four years. She wasn't sure she wanted to yet.

"Smells like rain," she commented, more lightly than she felt like being.

She heard her laugh. "Looks like it, too," she pointed out. "We haven't had rain for a while. Want me to give the kid his five minute's notice?"

Sandy furrowed her brow.

The sky above was blanketed in gray, and what little sun shone through the crevices of the dark clouds was watery and pale. The air was cool, cooler than it had been all week, and the final dredges of the clear day were fast disappearing as the wind blew in the storm. The playground was fast emptying, but there were still a few stray figures ambling through the path around the park.

She nodded. "We should go," she muttered, eyes trained on the pathway before turning back to her mother. "He'll be getting antsy now that everyone's leavin', anyway."

She strode for the playground, where James looked to be engaged in a competitive race to the top of the double slides. When he saw her below, his eyes widened almost comically and he pulled himself up the slide with more urgency and a cry of, "Can't go yet!"

She watched him flail at the crest of the slide before losing his footing and sliding back down in a pouting heap. Across the playground, two figures were ambling their way down the path, and she tried not to think too hard about it. She ruffled James' hair as he glowered. "Alright, kiddo, say bye to your friends."

His gaze shifted to rest on the boy now standing victoriously at the top of the slides. "They ain't my friends."

She raised an eyebrow. "James."

He sighed heavily, and she almost laughed as he turned to wave and muttered a subdued, "Bye."

Her mother smiled wryly, and Sandy got the feeling she was enjoying spectating her struggle immensely.

A bolt of lightning snaked through the sky, and she counted five seconds before the accompanying thunder crashed on the horizon. James was watching the sky with wide eyes. "Mama, can we go?"

She laughed lightly and scooped him into her arms, despite his half-hearted protests. "You ain't too old for this yet," she muttered, looking over her shoulder but barely able to see in the growing dark.

She was almost to the fountain-sized space she hated to look at when the next bolt of lightning danced across the dark background.

The rest of the people in the park were fast fleeing to their cars or houses, traipsing over the empty space like all it was was empty space.

She wondered how many of them knew they were almost standing on a grave.

It was better, she knew, that the fountain wasn't there; it was better that the scrap of a town she'd left behind had moved on since she'd left. But it felt _wrong._ It felt wrong standing there, being back in that town when four years ago there'd been a murder and missing persons and heartbreak and now all that remained were people trying their best to forget that.

She could see the outline of her car as the first raindrops began to fall and James tipped his head back in an attempt to catch them in his mouth, but he burrowed his head into her shoulder as a flash of lightning illuminated the park and Sandy found herself facing a figure that was taller than she'd expected but all too familiar.

She wasn't sure who looked away faster.

And she almost groaned out loud as she hurried to the car and tried not to process the fact that she'd just seen Ponyboy Curtis doing his best to pretend he didn't see her.

 **. . .**

Rosie's Diner was a small, dilapidated building on the east side of town with fluorescent lights and linoleum tiles and a god-awful bright blue color scheme, and it was Sandy's new favorite place in Tulsa.

She sipped her coffee and relished in the feeling of unrecognition, because the diner hadn't been there four years ago, and she'd needed to be somewhere she couldn't remember.

"Everything alright?"

She looked up from the paper she'd been scanning and smiled at the young, frazzled-looking waitress hovering at the end of the table. "Everything's great."

The waitress nodded hurriedly and flashed her a smile before rushing to the next table, and Sandy wondered why she seemed to be the only one working in the place on such a busy night. She thought she might have seen the redhead before, but she couldn't for the life of her remember where.

She glanced back down at the paper, but the news, as always, was about the war. It was always about the protests, the victories, or the dead.

She sighed and folded the paper, not sure what she'd been hoping to get out of reading it in the first place.

She was eating alone, for the first time in a long time, and guessed she'd sort of forgotten how to entertain herself without worrying about her four-year-old flinging his fork across the room. James had opted to stay back at home with her mother, probably because he knew he had his grandmother wrapped around his finger, and Sandy had been using the precious free time time to re-acquaint herself with the town.

"Never seen you around here before," a light voice pulled her out of her thoughts.

Sandy looked up at the waitress as she cleared her empty plate. She shrugged. "I'm sorta new in town," she told the girl as she added her plate to the precariously balanced pile of dishes she carried.

She nodded. "Ya like it here?"

Sandy had to consider that more than she'd have liked.

When she was sixteen, there hadn't been a place on her side of town that she didn't know like the back of her hand. When she was sixteen, she'd practically lived at the drive-in and the Dingo and Jay's and the places a lot of the town didn't want any part of, and she'd thought that was as free as she'd ever be.

But four years had changed a lot, and she'd left a lot of broken pieces behind, and Tulsa wasn't as big a place as it used to be.

"I'm still learning to," she decided.

"Well, I hope ya learn to, then." Anne casted her a smile that Sandy could've sworn she'd seen before as she swept away. "I'll get ya your check in- Debbie, you're an hour late!"

A woman a little older than Sandy had rushed out from the kitchen, but Sandy noticed an absence of the blue uniform the red-haired waitress wore. "If you'da bothered to pick up the phone, ya'd know why," she snapped.

The girl huffed and pushed past her with the mountain of dishes. "I've been a little _busy_ , Debra," she called over her shoulder.

The older woman rolled her eyes, and Sandy got the feeling this conversation wasn't headed in a good direction. "Listen, skag, this ain't my problem anymore- I quit this morning, so if you'd let me get my shit, I'll be on my way."

Sandy sighed. Dinner _and_ a show, then.

She raised her eyebrows at the scene as the apparently lone waitress' anger morphed to shock. "You can't do that!" She spluttered, following the woman into the kitchen. Sandy heard a few snatches of an argument before a door slammed and the waitress marched out the kitchen door into the dining area alone.

She dumped two plates at a table as she passed and hurried over to Sandy's table with a check. "I'm real sorry about that - it ain't usually so busy in here-"

"I used to wait tables," Sandy laughed. "You don't have anything to apologize for."

"Really?" The waitress set the check on the table and sized her up for a beat.

Sandy fidgeted. "Yeah - real run-down place near Tampa…"

The waitress nodded distractedly and bit her lip before asking suddenly, "You in the market for a job?"

Sandy stared, and the girl started to backtrack. "I mean, the pay ain't great or anythin', but it's consistent and we've always got mouths to feed…" Sandy stopped listening.

She wasn't looking for a job. She thought about the change jar in her mother's house, how it was so much emptier than she remembered it being, and she thought about her mom, cleaning houses for a source of income with her father in the hospital. Technically, no; she wasn't looking for a job. But her mother only worked in the mornings and the diner didn't open until noon and they had hospital bills to pay.

And the waitress was watching her with such cautious hope that she couldn't just say _no._

She laughed. "I guess I am."

"That's…" The look of gratitude on the girl's face was worth more than a month's salary at the diner. "Boss! Okay! Um… we got spare uniforms in the back, an' for tonight I just need someone to bus tables… Oh!" She grinned and held out a hand. "Ann Mathews, by the way, but ya can call me Annie."

Sandy furrowed her brow as she shook her hand. "Sandy Owens."

She followed Annie into the kitchen and winced as the temperature rose about thirty degrees.

 _Annie Mathews._ Where had she heard…

She blinked as a blue uniform was thrown at her. "You got a brother, by any-"

"Unfortunately," Annie rolled her eyes but smiled as she grabbed a plate from a flustered cook. "His name's Keith, but he probably told'ya it's Two-Bit."

Sandy smiled and nodded at her. "Right."

As the door swung open, she glanced from the uniform she held to her new coworker's retreating back and wondered what exactly she'd gotten herself into.

* * *

 _People writing songs that voices never share_

 _And no one dared_

 _Disturb the sound of silence_

\- Simon and Garfunkel, _The Sound of Silence_

* * *

 **A/N: You guys, typing out the line, "I've been a little _busy,_ Debra" made me laugh a lot more than it should have. **

**Like I said, I know most of y'all aren't big on Sandy, so thanks so much for giving this a try!** **This story won't really abide by a regular update schedule, but I have everything plotted out, so I can say that time gaps shouldn't get too absurd.**

 **Anyway, reviews and feedback are literally the greatest thing in this life, just as a general hint. ;) Thanks to each and everyone of you who's made it this far down the page!**

 **Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns the sandbox that is _The Outsiders,_ I'm just playing in it. ;) **


	2. She's Not There

**A/N: Firstly, thanks so much for the feedback, you guys! I didn't really know what to expect reception-wise because this is my first story for this fandom, and you guys are really amazing, so thank you for that! Also, general warning: brief description of an injury in this chapter (it's pretty mild, but I figured I'd put that out there).**

 **Anyway, I hope you enjoy!**

 **Don't Think Twice, It's Alright**

 _Chapter Two_

 _She's Not There_

* * *

The next time her past caught up with her, it was in the dairy aisle of a Krogers.

She had a red basket in her hand, half an hour before her shift at Rosie's started and a whining four-year-old clinging to her leg, and she just wanted to buy a carton of milk. She'd looked up from her survey for the cheapest brand she could buy in a half-gallon as James released his hold on her leg, and she hesitated just long enough to watch him hurtle down the aisle.

She stared after her son with exasperation, but not surprise.

"James! Use your indoor feet-" He'd already disappeared around the corner, and she didn't know what she'd been expecting. She sighed and abandoned the still-empty red basket to pursue her stray four-year-old.

She had to admit it was nice to know that her mother got the pleasure of watching him for the next five hours while she covered her shift at the diner. In Florida she hadn't really gotten out much unless her grandmother sent her to run errands, and she loved the kid, she really did, but she could only take so many "why?"s in an hour.

She found James in the cereal aisle, clutching a box of Sugar Pops and engaged in an animated conversation with a woman who'd apparently been kind enough to help him reach the shelf it was on.

Sandy didn't know if she should thank her or apologize to her first.

She hurried over. "I'm real sorry about him, he just-" The girl turned around.

Evie Ross scowled at her from behind her plastic cart.

"I- uh." She cleared her throat and avoided what she knew without looking was a venomous gaze. "James, why don't you take that back to the basket?"

The boy in question gazed wide-eyed between his mother and the good Samaritan who'd helped him reach his cereal and hugged the cereal box in his hands. "Can I-"

Sandy sighed. "You can keep the Sugar Pops," she said, which was apparently all the boy needed to hear before scampering away.

Sandy forced her eyes to focus on the girl in front of her, standing with her hands on her hips and dominating the aisle in all her bottle-blonde, scowling, and painfully familiar glory.

Evie's eyes weren't cold, but there was a pang in Sandy's chest where she used to hold fondness for that searing green gaze. Evie's eyes weren't cold, because that wasn't her style; they were filled with resentment, overflowing with unchecked anger and unresolved questions and poorly-hidden betrayal.

Sandy just wanted to buy a goddamn carton of milk.

"Heard ya were back in town." Evie spoke quietly, crossing her arms and leaning forward over the front of her cart.

Sandy swallowed. "I won't be here for long."

She'd be gone to somewhere she could go to the store without running into the girl that four years ago she'd have called her best friend.

Evie was watching her with narrowed eyes, and Sandy bit her lip as she scoffed. "And who're you runnin' from? The guy who knocked you up or the guy who didn't?"

She only allowed herself a second to be surprised at how willing Evie was to go _there_ , but it was enough; Evie raised an eyebrow as she faltered, and Sandy crossed her arms. "I'm runnin' from the people who used to be my friends," she said more bitterly than she really had a right to. Something flickered in Evie's eyes, but it looked more like anger than anything else.

The hum of commercial refrigerators buzzed in her ears, and a light flickered above them as they stood in the cereal aisle of a Krogers that could have been anywhere, that hadn't changed in four years, and that suddenly felt more like a battleground than a store.

Sandy inhaled slowly and then sighed. "I have to go, Evie." She was already edging down the aisle toward James, running away because that was what she did best.

Evie followed her gaze to rest on James, and Sandy was already calculating how much of a mess he'd managed to make in the forty seconds she'd had her back turned, but Evie's gaze was more critical. Sandy turned her back and started to walk away, and she tried not to think about how familiar that felt.

"Cute kid," Evie commented at her retreating back, and Sandy felt a familiar dread pool in her stomach because what followed that statement couldn't be good, not coming from Evie Ross. A bitter laugh skittered down the linoleum. "He almost coulda passed for Sodapop's."

Sandy ignored the way that made her blood run cold.

 _Almost._

And she could practically feel Evie's eyes on her back, gauging her reaction, because there had been a time when Evie had known Sandy better than she'd known herself. There had been a time when she'd thought about _telling_ Evie, and not just the lies she'd told Tulsa. But neither of them knew each other any more, not really, and Sandy hadn't been doing this the last four years just to give in to a familiar face who knew the right spots to prod at her.

So she turned to look back and offered her old friend a plastic smile, because four years had changed a lot, and Evie Ross couldn't be the person she used to be to her. "I'll see ya around, Evie."

Evie didn't blink at the dismissal, and Sandy wondered if she'd expected her to.

She bit her lip as she strode over to James, who appeared to have torn open his box of cereal in what had to be record time for a four-year-old.

Sandy took a minute to stare at the mess of Sugar Pops on the linoleum floor. James watched her carefully, chewing as quietly as he possibly could on a cereal that crunched with every bite, and she sighed. "You want more cereal now, don't you?"

A few crumbs escaped his full mouth when he nodded, and she tried not to wince.

"Right." She picked up her wildly protesting child and put the half-empty box of cereal into the equally empty basket before grabbing a carton of milk to shove in beside it. "Well-" she picked up the basket and headed to the checkout. "You have spectacular timing, kiddo. Really."

 **. . .**

The house was too quiet when Ponyboy got home, and he wondered if that boded well for how late he was or not.

It was almost nine o'clock at night, and when he approached his house the only cars he saw in the driveway belonged to the people who actually lived there, which couldn't be right. A few stray leaves skittered across the pavement in the late September wind as he trudged towards the back door, and the old hinges squealed in protest as he threw it open.

"Darry?" he called a little apprehensively into the depths of the house as he dumped his backpack inside the doorway.

The accompanying footsteps creaked across the floorboards, and Ponyboy sighed.

"Wanna tell me why you didn't come home after practice ended?"

Ponyboy shrugged off his sweatshirt and focused intently on unlacing his shoes. "It ran late." He managed to meet Darry's eye. "Coach had us working on distance running."

Darry raised an eyebrow. "For three and a half hours."

Ponyboy cleared his throat and scuffed his foot against the worn wood on the floor. "Yeah."

Darry sighed and uncrossed his arms, which Ponyboy had learned to identify as his gesture of defeat. He shook his head. "I don't want you at Buck's place, Pony. Ya know I've spent years trying to keep Soda away, too, and you ain't helpin'."

Ponyboy huffed but didn't press the argument for the night. "I wasn't even at Buck's," he muttered as he stood up and dropped his shoes among the rest of the pile at the door.

He and Darry had been going back and forth about this since Curly Shepard had gotten out of the cooler a few months back, because Ponyboy thought Curly was good company, and Darry thought Curly was a bad influence. Ponyboy definitely didn't make a habit of going to Buck's either; he disliked most of the people there too much and enjoyed the crappy booze too little. But Two-Bit had found him on one of very few occasions that he'd followed Curly's lead and ended up there, and that hadn't been fun to explain to Darry. Or Soda, for that matter.

Darry, if anything, looked more wary as Ponyboy prepared to flee the kitchen. "Where were ya, then?"

Ponyboy studied the floor. "Drive-in-" He glanced up. "Where's Soda?"

Darry noticed the quick change in topic but didn't comment, and Ponyboy was thankful for that. "With Steve, doing God knows what," he said dryly.

Ponyboy nodded and privately relished in the feeling of being on the inside of the conversation for once, because it had taken nearly three years, but he and Darry had finally worked out something of a compromise. He was about to ask why Two-Bit hadn't come by yet to raid the fridge when the phone rang, and he dove to get it before Darry.

"Hello?" He didn't bother with proper greetings, because anybody calling the Curtis house knew what they'd signed up for.

There was a crackle from the other end, and he heard a heavy sigh. "Hey, kid, could ya put your brother on?"

Ponyboy blinked. "Two-Bit? Why're you callin' at-"

He heard a string of profanity and furrowed his brows. "I'll put Darry on, hang on-" he held the phone up to Darry and called him over. Still, he handed it over with reluctance, because he got the feeling that whatever was going on was something that he wanted to be filled in on.

He watched Darry mutter a few choice words at something Two-Bit said and then slam the phone down onto the receiver.

"What-"

"Two-Bit tore up his side runnin' from the fuzz," Darry said with a heavy sigh. "He's gonna hitch a ride here from his sister."

Ponyboy nodded and almost laughed, because of course Two-Bit had been running from the cops while he was wondering why it was so quiet. "Where's his sister at?"

Darry ran a hand down his face. "Some diner in town."

Ponyboy nodded but privately wondered if he should pity the people in that diner, because an injured Two-Bit Mathews was never good for business.

 **. . .**

"The guy at table seven is wondering if he can buy you dinner. From here. Where you work." Annie made a face as she arranged dishes on her platter. "Where he sent me to hit on you for him."

It was quiet for a Friday night, but there were still a few people lingering in their booths, waiting until either they were ready to go or Annie got really irritable and started stacking chairs around them so she could close up at 9 o'clock. She and Annie had gotten into the habit of carpooling because Annie didn't have a car and lived pretty close to the diner anyway, and Annie didn't like to be at the diner any longer than her shift deemed necessary. Sandy had been working there a week, and she knew the drill.

She glanced at the man sitting solitarily in the booth with only a milkshake and what looked like a flask, and she laughed. "Tell him I've got a four year old kid and five years of baggage tellin' him to reconsider."

Annie nodded resolutely and balanced the tray over her arm.

"Gotcha," she said with a grin that Sandy had fast learned seldom really left her face. She paused to consider Sandy's words more carefully. "That's fair," she decided as she hurried back to dump the platter at the last full table of the night.

By some small mercy, there were no orders left to take, so Sandy grabbed the rag that was always sitting on the counter in a tub that reeked of bleach and smacked it onto the nearest table. She cleaned the table the way Annie had taught her, which was to sweep the crumbs on the floor and burn that bridge when it came time to do the mopping.

The restaurant was empty except for a handsy couple in the corner booth, and the tables were all clean and sufficiently soaked in bleach when the door flew open once more.

Sandy whirled around as the bell hanging from the corner of the door frame hit the wall and fell with a sad clang.

The man who had flung open the door was running like he definitely had something chasing him and sporting what looked to be a pretty gruesome wound in his side as he hurled himself toward the kitchen, and Sandy could only stare.

Rosie's was a dead-end diner on the east side of Tulsa, and to be perfectly honest she'd seen worse, but the man glanced behind him before launching himself over the kitchen counter, and Sandy's heart sank into her stomach as Annie's cries of protest filled the air.

Because it was Annie's brother that was bleeding on the diner floor, and that didn't bode well for any of them.

"Hey, dumbass!" Annie was already marching toward the kitchen. "I just mopped that floor."

Annie leaned over the front of the counter to glare down at her brother, and Sandy hurried to collect the check from the couple, who suddenly looked real anxious to get out of there. They waved nervously as they hurried out, and Sandy tried not to think about the tip money this was going to cost her as she hurried to join Annie in spite of her best instincts.

Outside, she could hear the whine of a cop car, and she didn't even have to listen to know that it was fast approaching the diner.

Two-Bit grumbled something at Annie, who flicked her gaze to the windows at the front of the diner before turning back to her brother with a stormy glare. "So help me, Keith, if the cops start knockin' on our door…"

Two-Bit had pressed himself against the counter so that anyone entering the diner couldn't see a bleeding man in the kitchen. He exhaled harshly and held his side but pointed a stern finger at his sister. "I'll tell ya later- don't tell 'em I'm here if they come in."

Sandy thought that 'if they come in' was a little bit of a stretch, because there were only two other buildings on the block that Two-Bit could have run to, and the cops would know that the diner was the path of least resistance. Annie was glaring daggers at her brother, but Sandy didn't miss the way her gaze stuck on the blood on his shirt. She ran a hand through her hair and glanced at Sandy like she'd just remembered she was there.

She tried not to think about the consequences of literally harboring a fugitive as she stared over the counter. "What the hell is going on?" She asked, because that felt like about all there was to do in that situation.

A police car had pulled into the lot near the diner, and Annie strode over to the window and yanked the blinds closed before they could look in. She pointed a finger accusingly at Two-Bit as she walked back. "He'd know," she said plainly. "I sure as hell don't."

Two-Bit was watching Sandy from underneath the counter with recognition clouding his gaze, and she inhaled sharply and decided that it was better for none of them to get caught than to end up being charged with aiding and abetting. She turned on her heel and clicked the lock closed on the door, because five extra seconds might be the difference between… well, neither outcome was good, but she'd rather take her chances with the cops than the greasers.

She glanced out the window before turning back to Two-Bit. "We got about thirty seconds before the cops start bangin' on the door, so if ya got something to say to me, say it after they're gone."

Two-Bit nodded appreciatively, which Sandy knew couldn't be a good thing. "More time to prepare my speech," he said with a smile that was more bared teeth than anything.

Something pounded against the door, and both of them glanced at it with wide eyes.

Annie was already rushing for the door, but she turned back to them before opening it. "I don't even want to know what this is about, but y'all are gonna have to be real friggin careful for the next five minutes," she declared before clicking the lock open.

Sandy squeaked and motioned wildly for Two-Bit to tuck himself further under the counter, and he complied, but with a lot of grumbling. Sandy whirled to face the door as it opened and smiled brightly at the two men who trudged in.

Annie was trying the wave the men away like she didn't know what they were there for, and Sandy had to give her credit for how casual she managed to sound. "Sorry, officers, we just closed up for the night." She glanced between the two brightly. "I could grab ya a cup of coffee or somethin' if-"

"We're just searching the building, ma'am, but thank you." Cops numbers one and two were already pushing past her into the diner, and Annie motioned frantically at Sandy behind their backs.

After checking that there was no one in the booths, they approached Sandy, who stood in front of the counter.

She cleared her throat. "Uh, can I help y'all with anything?" She moved to stand in the entrance to the kitchen, and the men exchanged a glance as they decided how to handle the waitress in their path. "The bathrooms are back there, if you wanted to check…"

The tall one, who Sandy had inwardly dubbed Cop #1, stepped forward. He looked tired, and Sandy almost felt bad for making this so hard on him. Almost. "Would you mind showing us into the kitchen?" He asked in an exaggeratedly casual tone.

Sandy smiled and hoped that it didn't look like a grimace. "Not at all," she said. "Follow me."

Annie hurried over to follow the officers, and she stared at Sandy with wide eyes as she lead them around the counter into the kitchen.

She cleared her throat again and prayed to God that Two-Bit wouldn't move as she pushed herself up to sit on the counter, hoping that maybe she'd be able to keep their gazes on the waitress sitting on top of the counter rather than the criminal crammed underneath it. Her legs were dangling in front of Two-Bit's face, and again she prayed that he wouldn't see fit to move, because that'd be a hell of a way to flash someone.

The cops surveyed the crowded kitchen, and Annie fought to keep their attention away from the counter as she strode to the opposite end of the room.

"So can I ask what y'all are lookin' for?" She grabbed a few stray trays and stacked them loudly enough to draw the cops' attention. "'Cause sorry for the mess, but we haven't really got anything worth finding, anyway."

Cop #2 cleared his throat, and it struck Sandy that they may have hated this as much as she and Annie did, just for entirely different reasons. "Either of you seen a bleedin' man come through her recently?"

Sandy tried not to wince, and she felt something move against her leg. It took more willpower than she'd care to admit not to kick backward.

Annie laughed. "That sounds like the kind of thing we'd call you about."

She flicked her gaze to Sandy, which was a bad idea, because Cop #1 seemed pretty intent on doing his job, and he noticed the glance.

Annie blanched as he furrowed his brows, and Sandy pushed herself a little higher on the counter. "Find what you're lookin' for, then? 'Cause it's a pretty small kitchen."

She met the officer's eye and smiled, and he shook his head after a beat. "Nah, but you two call us if something seems off, y'hear?"

Sandy nodded. "Course!" she said brightly, and Annie splayed a hand over her heart dramatically behind the officers' backs. Sandy smiled again at the two men. "Annie can show y'all out, I just got some cleaning up to do."

Annie hurried to the front of the group and herded the officers out, chattering about rumors she'd heard involving the insurance firm across the street.

As soon as the door swung closed, Sandy hopped off of the counter and sighed deeply. Her hands were shaking, and she thought that experience might top the list of the most illegal things she'd done. Through the window above the counter, she could see Annie bidding goodbye to the officers. Sandy crossed her arms and looked down at Two-Bit, who stared back.

"They gone?" He asked, maneuvering himself so he was just peeking out from the counter.

A door slammed across the diner, and Sandy could hear Annie rushing over. She nodded and ran a hand through her hair. "They're gone."

The door flew open as Annie marched in to join them. " _Keith Mathews_ ," she snarled with a sense of authority that surprised Sandy, "what the _hell_ was that?"

Two-Bit winced as he met his sister's glare. "I ran into some trouble at a gas station, it's nothin' really."

Annie scoffed, and Sandy had to agree with the sentiment. "You bleedin' on the floor ain't nothing, asshole."

Two-Bit groaned as he hauled himself out from under the counter. He inspected the blood on his hands and grimaced. "Actually, it'd be great if something could be done about that."

Annie bit her lip and shook her head at her brother, and it occurred to Sandy that she had the only ride out of here, because she and Annie had carpooled.

Annie seemed to have realized the same thing, because she was watching Sandy apologetically.

Sandy squinted at Two-Bit and tried to determine how close he actually was to bleeding out. There was blood smeared on the floor but not soaking it, and he seemed to be steady enough, but she wasn't sure they had time to stand around talking about it. After sizing him up, she crossed her arms. "Get in the car and then tell us what happened."

Two-Bit quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the counter. "Where we goin'?"

Sandy looked to Annie for an answer, and she watched her brother coolly as she responded. "That depends on your answer."

Two-Bit rubbed the back of his neck and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette as they filed out the back door of the diner.

It was cooler outside, and the breeze was nice compared to the stuffy heat of the kitchen, but it was hard to enjoy it while dragging a wildly protesting Two-Bit to her car. The gravel crunched underneath her feet and she prayed that no one was going to lose their footing, because if one of them went down they all did.

She yanked open the back door of her car and helped Annie shove him onto the cracked vinyl seat before going around to the front and sinking into the driver's seat with a sigh.

Two-Bit, evidently successful in his hunt for a cigarette, was swearing at his lighter. He clicked it once more and looked up in defeat. "Anyone got-"

"Does it look like the time?" Annie snapped as she reached back and yanked the cigarette away.

Two-Bit scowled. "I paid good money for that."

Sandy started the car and watched Annie roll down the passenger seat window and flick the cigarette onto the gravel. "What the hell happened, Two-Bit?" She asked, watching him in her rearview mirror.

Two-Bit quirked an eyebrow as he fished for another cigarette. "See, my mom's been on my tail about gettin' a job again, so I ended up takin' a job as a gladiator-"

"Keith," Annie growled, rolling the window up without looking at him.

Sandy pulled onto the street leading away from the diner and tried not to think about where she might end up going. The roads were all quiet, but she could see lots filled up with people, because afterall, it was a Friday night in Tulsa.

Two-Bit held his hands up and sighed. "I got caught bagging a pack of cigarettes from the gas station and had to get past some barbed wire to lose the pigs."

"Well, you did a hell of a job of getting 'em off your tail." Annie crossed her arms as she slouched in the seat next to Sandy.

Sandy sighed and glanced at him again in the mirror. "Paid good money for that stolen cigarette?"

He offered a grin as he shrugged, and she realized that he and Annie really did have the same careless smile.

"So where am I meant to be takin' you? The hospital, or…" She wasn't quite ready to finish that thought, because she knew where Two-Bit went when he got hurt, and she got the feeling she wasn't welcome there. "I could take ya to your house, if ya don't think you need a doctor," she said instead.

The collective scoff from Annie and Two-Bit was almost sinister in its power.

Annie turned slightly to face Sandy and shook her head. "Our house ain't a such good place to stitch someone up," she said, and Sandy nodded. She lived on the same side of town as the Mathews, and she knew that there were some things you didn't talk about.

She blew out a puff of air and tried to focus on the road. "You could come to my place, then, if-"

"Sandy," Two-Bit was shaking his head, looking like he was dreading this almost as much as she was. "You already know where I want to go."

She bit her lip and glanced at the mirror; Two-Bit was paler than he'd been when he'd run into the diner, and she got the feeling that he was hurting a lot more than he let on. And maybe she and Two-Bit had their differences, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let him bleed out in her car because she had baggage she wasn't willing to own up to.

She swallowed and stared down the dusty road. "Yeah," she sighed. "I know."

 **. . .**

It was so dark she almost missed the driveway.

As she slammed on the breaks and thought that it was almost funny, that she'd spent so much of her sophomore and junior years at that house but she'd never once driven there herself. It was almost funny, because otherwise she'd have to think harder about whose driveway she was veering into as she cranked the steering wheel at the last minute and pulled into the driveway.

"So." She tapped the wheel and stared at the house illuminated by her headlights. "Can ya get in on your own, or…"

She hated that everything still felt so raw after four years.

She didn't think that she could pretend that being back there was nothing important after four years running from the tatters she'd left behind. She didn't know how to be back there and not go back to the way she'd left things, because she was living in a town different from the one she'd left behind, and it was her own fault. She hated that seeing that house made her think of the girl she used to be, because that girl wasn't there anymore.

That girl had gone to Florida and returned unopened letters when she decided there was no going back.

When she tore her gaze away from the house, Annie was watching her like she wanted to know what was going on but had more pressing matters, and Sandy had to give her credit for her resolve. "I might need help gettin' him inside," Annie finally said before pushing open her door and climbing out of the car.

Sandy still had the headlights on when she opened the car door, because it was dark and the last thing she needed was to stumble her way to the Curtis house in the dark. She could hear cicadas chirping from somewhere in the yard as she pulled open the back door. The air felt cleaner than it had earlier in the day and the moon casted a watery light on the house, and Sandy wished she could be anywhere else right then.

As they passed in front of the headlights, she could see Two-Bit watching her with raised eyebrows. She huffed and yanked on the arm slung around her shoulder. "What?" Her voice seemed too loud on the quiet street.

"Nothin'," Two-Bit said with a too-innocent head shake. "Just don't expect any welcome parties when you get inside."

Sandy swallowed. "I'm dragging your ass to the door and then leaving," she said decided swiftly.

Two-Bit laughed softly. "Sounds about right."

Sandy bristled but didn't respond. A quick glance at Two-Bit told her that he wasn't doing as well as he made out to be; she could hear him breathing shortly, and he was depending on her and Annie a lot more than he had been in the parking lot, and she didn't think an argument was going to help that.

They stumbled forward in silence.

The canvas of her shoes was soaked from the rain earlier in the day, and she was sincerely regretting not taking off her uniform from the diner, because the night was cool and goosebumps had risen on her bare legs. She and Annie hauled Two-Bit a few feet farther and then found themselves standing in front of a screen door as rushed footsteps sounded from inside the house.

She heard a few snatches of rushed conversation before the door was yanked open. Sandy blinked in the sudden flood of light as Darrel Curtis surveyed his friend from the doorway. "Two-Bit, what the hell ha- What are you doing here?"

Sandy scuffed her foot in the dirt and looked down as Darry's gaze turned to rest on her. She inhaled once and then looked up. "I'm tryin' to keep your friend from bleeding out, and I think we got bigger concerns right now."

She tried not to look past Darry into the house, but she could see Ponyboy just behind him in the doorway, and _please don't let him be home right now-_

"We don't have time to argue about this," Annie snapped after a beat of charged quiet, and Sandy jolted out of her thoughts.

Darry watched her for another second and then sighed. "We'll get him inside."

Sandy released the breath she'd been holding and nodded.

Two-Bit hissed as she and Annie maneuvered to be able to pass him off to Darry. She ducked out from underneath the arm he'd slung over her shoulder, and Two-Bit went limp in her hold altogether. She yelped as she was dragged towards the ground.

"Two-Bit, what the hell-" She heard Annie's voice, irritated and confused, as she flailed to hold his full weight.

Darry was already reaching out, trying to stop Two-Bit from hitting the ground too hard, and it was all Sandy and Annie could do to keep his head from crashing against the dusty steps.

"Two-Bit?" Sandy tried to get a better grip on his arm and craned her neck to see the man crumpled between the two of them. She groaned and shook her head at Annie. "He's out."

Annie stumbled forward and released her hold on Two-Bit's arm, and Sandy sunk to her knees under the weight before doing the same. Annie looked down at her brother and pinched the bridge of her nose. Darry stared at the group assembled on his doorstep and sighed.

Sandy let the damp ground soak her knees as she surveyed Two-Bit, who was sprawled on his stomach and dead to the world. She turned to survey the worn house in front of her and decided it was high time to stop pretending she wasn't there, because she didn't think there was an easy way out of this.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

 _But it's too late to say you're sorry_

 _How would I know, why should I care?_

 _Please don't bother trying to find her_

 _She's not there_

\- The Zombies, _She's Not There_

* * *

 **A/N: Thanks so much for reading, you guys! A lot of the next chapters are going to have some pretty awkward meetings between Sandy and the other characters, and ngl I'm pretty psyched to write them.**

 **Also, if y'all think the song lyrics are weird I totally get it, and I've mostly put them in there for me; way back when I was first outlining this story, I used songs from the era as inspiration for scenes, and I was too sentimental to edit them out. ;)**

 **Anyway, this chapter sort of got things rolling, and thank you so much for bearing with me! Like I said, all of your reviews literally made my week. See you soon!**


	3. Not a Second Time

**Don't Think Twice, It's Alright**

 _Chapter 3_

 _Not a Second Time_

* * *

 _Tick_

Two-Bit was sprawled unconscious on the couch and all she could think about was that damn clock.

 _Tick_

She paced the living room of the Curtis house and pushed her hair back while Darry and Ponyboy rushed to get whatever medical supplies they could scrounge from the cabinets. They'd managed to drag Two-Bit in and dump him onto the couch, and from there it had been a flurry of finding the right materials to keep him from bleeding out on the upholstery. Annie stood by the couch trying to make sure Two-Bit didn't fall of the edge of it, but she looked up as Sandy strode by.

"So why the-" she motioned vaguely around Sandy with her hands and made a face- "vibes?"

Sandy blinked. "I…" She glanced back at the kitchen, where Darry and Ponyboy still had their heads buried in cabinets. She sighed. "Guess I never thought I'd be back here."

There were a few clatters from the kitchen accompanied by exasperated tones, but no one emerged bearing make-shift medical supplies, so Sandy figured they were safe for the time being.

Annie nodded and shifted positions on the couch to face her. "So the baggage you mentioned earlier tonight… That in Tulsa?"

Sandy laughed softly and bit her lip. "Yeah."

"How'd ya know Two-Bit?" Annie glanced back down at her unconcious brother wryly.

Sandy turned to glance at the kitchen once more and lowered her voice, because this was a spectacularly awful conversation to be having at the Curtis house. "I… used to date Sodapop Curtis." She stared at the scratches on the floor as she continued. "It didn't end well."

 _Tick_

That _damn_ clock. It felt like it was counting down to something, counting the minutes until something inevitable unraveled, and Sandy didn't like it.

She looked up at Annie, whose eyes were soft with something dangerously close to sympathy. "I remember that. When all the other shit was going down, right?" She shook her head without waiting for a response. "I guess I shoulda connected the dots."

Sandy sighed and glanced back at the kitchen as Ponyboy appeared in the doorway. "I should get outta here." She turned to the door but hesitated and turned back to Annie. "You gonna be able to get a ride home?"

"I can drive her," Ponyboy answered for her, and Sandy got the feeling he was just as eager for her departure as she was.

She tried not to allow herself to be too shocked that he could drive now, because it had been four years and she guessed that made sense, but it was still… _weird._

She swallowed hard and nodded as she strode for the door. "Tell Two-Bit to stay outta gas stations for the time being."

Annie laughed dryly from the couch. "And to stay away from the fuzz," she nodded.

Sandy bit her lip and tried not to look around the house, because _God,_ it was the same as it had been. "I'm gonna go, if there's nothing-"

She was almost to the entryway when the door opened.

The first thing she noticed as she fought to steady her heart was that Steve Randall was traipsing through the door, and she felt her blood run cold, because if Steve was there, then that meant-

"Sodapop." Ponyboy was rushing to the door, trying to give at least a semblance of a warning before… before he walked in and saw her, which he had.

Her breath caught in her throat as his eyes locked onto her, those same sunshine-and-whiskey colored eyes that she used to think she could stare at forever suddenly burning a hole in her.

 _Tick_

He watched her from the doorway, eyes wide and worried and lost, and she felt a lump in her throat.

 _Tick_

"What the _hell_ is she doing here?" Steve snarled over the fragile silence.

Sandy tore her gaze away to stare at the floor as she tried to remember how to breath. The still air was suffocating, and the silence was deafening.

 _Tick_

Annie had stood up from her position on the couch, and Sandy watched her, grateful for the distraction. "She's helpin' me keep my brother's sorry ass alive, so-" Annie motioned lazily at the couch- "you can take it up with him."

Sandy noticed the way Steve's eyes flickered with fear when he saw Two-Bit sprawled on the couch, but he was glaring at her again before she could think too hard about the greasers still looking after their own. "So, what?" he demanded, stepping in front of Sodapop in a gesture that Sandy knew was intended to protect him. "You try your tricks on Two-Bit and get him into trouble?"

Sandy almost - _almost_ , thank God- laughed at that, because the indication that she'd somehow gotten Two-Bit stabbed was a little much, even for Steve, but instead she sighed. Steve wasn't being unreasonable; Sodapop was his closest friend, and she'd broken his heart, and she wouldn't have let anyone get away with that, either. She'd hate herself if she was standing where everyone in that house was.

Hell, she hadn't forgiven herself, and she knew the full truth of the situation.

Sandy kept her eyes glued to the floor, because there was a lot in that room right then that she didn't want to see. "He found us after a run-in with the fuzz," she said plainly. "I work at the diner with Annie."

 _Tick_

She surveyed the scuffed wood and tried not to think about how much louder the clock seemed to have gotten since she'd stumbled in.

Steve's scoff made her look up, and he was sneering. "So all the whorehouses were full?"

She wasn't sure that there was a right response to that.

She crossed her arms, and because she didn't think that much could make the situation worse, she tilted her head and replied. "I'm sure you'd know better than me."

"No, believe me, I'd call you up if I knew a guy looking for an easy f-"

"Steve." Soda was looking at the floor, which Sandy thought was funny, because she was doing the same but for wildly different reasons.

He flicked his eyes to hers, and she felt like a deer caught in the headlights before he looked back down, and she tried to remember how to breath without feeling like her chest was made of lead.

She sucked in a deep breath and then nodded back at Annie.

"I'm gonna go," she said, but it felt like a bluff, because Sodapop and Steve were still in the doorway and she didn't think she was physically capable of walking through that.

Her feet felt too heavy as she walked forward, trying not to look ahead, because _God, he was right there,_ and she was having trouble ignoring the ache in her chest. She was about four feet away from the door when Steve turned on his heel and strode past into the kitchen, and Soda trailed behind him as she fled for the doorway.

She grasped the cool metal of the door handle like a lifeline and tried not to think about how likely it was that this was the last time she was ever going to cross this threshold.

She hated that she didn't know if that was for the best or not.

Sandy shoved the door open and closed her eyes and cursed the injustice that even the squealing of the hinges could cause a pang in her chest. She released her grip on the handle and hated how hard it was to convince herself that she wasn't going to miss any of it-

"Sandy."

She whirled to face the doorway, where Sodapop stood as still as she'd ever seen him, looking lost in his own house, and she knew her hands were shaking as she tilted her head and met his gaze with wide eyes.

He held her stare for a millisecond before flicking his eyes down again. He shook his head and opened his mouth, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second as she nodded, trying not to think about everything they couldn't say.

"I'm gonna go," she said again, and this time her throat felt tight and hoarse, and she didn't wait for him to go back inside before she fled back to her car, back to the world she'd lived in the past four years.

The car door closed with a click and she tried not to let her hands shake as she turned the ignition. She didn't look back as she pulled away, and she didn't want to think about how bitterly familiar that felt. And she barely made it off their street with Aretha Franklin blaring out of the radio before she pulled over because the roads were blurry and her eyes felt hot and the weight in her chest was crushing her.

So she sat in her car with music playing too loud and shaking shoulders until she knew her mother would start worrying and James would wonder why she hadn't tucked him in yet and she realized that the town had moved on but she hadn't.

 **. . .**

When her alarm rang Saturday morning, Sandy seriously debated quitting her job.

Her head was throbbing and her eyes felt swollen, and she hadn't had anything to drink last night but she certainly felt like she had. She scrunched her eyes shut and groaned at the shrill ringing of her alarm.

She let it ring three more times before cracking open an eye.

6:33a.m.

 _Fantastic._

She groaned and rubbed her eyes as she hauled herself out of bed and tried not to wince at the fragmented memories of last night's dreams. She got the feeling her subconscious was judging her for the wreck she'd left in her wake the night before, but she wasn't going to give herself the luxury of worrying about that.

She had an early shift at a dead-end diner to prepare for.

She had to clock in at Rosie's by eight o'clock on Saturdays, and when on normal days she considered any hour before nine to be inhumane, she didn't know how she was going to make it through the day.

Her son, on the other hand, woke with the sun, and she'd been trying to learn his secret for years.

He was curled on the couch watching reruns of _The Flintstones_ when she emerged from her room in her work uniform. She tried to tell herself not to feel too guilty for sleeping through his wake-up call, because he wasn't causing trouble and she was only a room away, but she still got the feeling she probably should have been up to watch him. She wished kids came with an owner's manual.

James' dimpled smile greeted her as she padded over, and she grinned back at him as she stole a spot on the couch. "Think your grandma's awake yet?"

A crease appeared in James' forehead, and he surveyed the closed door that lead to her room. He shook his head. "'S'not sunny out."

"Well," Sandy held back a giggle at the solemnity in his voice, because he was right that her mother was never up before the sun, and she looked towards the kitchen. "You think the smell of pancakes could get her up?"

She had to laugh at the way his eyes lit up, and he scampered after her into the kitchen of her childhood house.

Her mother had redecorated a lot of the kitchen, and Sandy was silently cursing her for rearranging the cabinets, but the entire house was still uncannily similar to the way it had been when she'd been James' age, and she wasn't quite sure how to feel about the symmetry.

"Pan-cakes! Pan-cakes!" James paraded back into the kitchen with an enthusiastic chant and a confused basset hound in tow as Sandy tried in vain not to splatter the batter on the griddle.

"James, Doc's not allowed in the kitchen-" She did her best to call over her shoulder, but it was hard to make a convincing argument when James was engaged in a wrestling match against the dog on the tile floor. It looked like they were fighting over a tennis ball, and Sandy didn't wait to see the outcome before unceremoniously rolling the ball out of the kitchen.

She listened to the frantic footsteps that followed and laughed. In the time they'd been there, Doc and James had developed something of a rivalry, though over what was anyone's guess. Anyway, it kept James occupied while he was at the house, so there was always a plus side.

By the time the pancakes were charred to Sandy's liking, her mother had emerged from her room and pulled the four-year-old and the basset hound apart.

"Morning," Sandy greeted as she vacated the smoky kitchen. She balanced a stack of pancakes and a plate of bacon on her arm and prayed to God that the fire alarm wasn't going to go off. "The menu for today is charred pancakes, blackened bacon, and dry cereal."

Her mother smiled wryly as she took a seat. "This is what I get for sleeping in."

Sandy managed to get James in his chair without much trouble, but her brief moment of victory was quashed when he got hold of the syrup bottle.

Sandy shrugged at her mother and tried to ignore the four-year-old drowning his plate in syrup. "If ya want something edible, you gotta make it yourself- _Okay_." Sandy turned back to her son and grabbed the syrup bottle from his already-sticky hands. She ignored the cries of protest. "Pancakes can't swim, J," she sighed and dabbed at a spot of syrup on his nose with a napkin.

She couldn't really blame him, because the pancakes were awful, but she wasn't relishing the clean-up. She turned back to her mother. "I won't be back until seven tonight, so…"

"I'll make sure he gets actual food later," she said with a resolute nod, and Sandy sighed. She'd never really been much of a cook, and her mom knew it, even if James hadn't quite figured it out yet.

Sandy watched her son with a critical gaze as he apparently made the decision to forego silverware and eat his pancakes with his fingers. She probably could have said something, but then, the damage was done, and she had to go.

She pushed her chair out and strode to grab the keys on the kitchen counter.

"Don't let him touch anything until he's washed his hands," she called as she grabbed her purse and dumped her plate in the sink.

She glanced back at James just in time to see him let Doc lick the remaining syrup off of his fingers. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting. "Make sure he washes them well," she added wryly.

Sandy's mother nodded, but Sandy noticed the hesitation before she spoke. "You thinking about headin' to the hospital at all, or-"

Sandy pulled the door open and looked back tiredly. "I've got the day off on Wednesday." She watched the pavement outside as she spoke. "I'll take James with me."

There was a measured pause, and she heard her mother sigh and start to gather up dishes. "It'll be good for them to meet," she called to Sandy, but she wasn't sure who she was trying to convince.

Sandy swallowed hard as she left and tried not to think about her mother's cautious words, still so careful around her after four years. Taking James _there_ was the last thing she wanted to do, but it wasn't like she could hide forever. It wasn't like she could make things much worse, anyway.

She pulled into the empty gravel lot at Rosie's three minutes before her shift started.

Save for Annie and a lone chef clambering around the kitchen, the diner was empty, which she guessed was expected, because they technically didn't open for another three minutes, but she hated getting there early and waiting until the breakfast crowd woke up.

She sighed, grabbed an apron to complete her uniform, and tried not to meet Annie's gaze.

They hadn't talked after the disaster of the previous night, and Sandy didn't know what to expect. On the one hand, Annie had seemed more sympathetic than angry, but on the other hand, Sandy didn't think she could take anyone's sympathy.

She was tying the apron around her waist when Annie approached.

"Ya gonna get that, or should I?" She asked, eyes trained on the far corner of the diner.

"I-" Annie watching her splutter with a raised eyebrow. She motioned towards a group of three girls in the corner, and Sandy nodded hurriedly and pushed herself away from the counter. "I got it."

She took the girls' orders with an exaggeratedly bright smile. They were a group of soc's, although she guessed that word wasn't really used much anymore, and they were whining animatedly about their latest physics test. Sandy had to laugh, however bitterly, because the juniors took physics. She'd never made it that far.

She put in the order, brought them their drinks, and then leaned back against the counter with a sigh.

Annie watched her huffy approach with a laugh. "Long night, huh?" She offered a smile, but Sandy felt like she was being scrutinized.

"It was a long time coming." She swallowed and looked at the meticulously-cleaned counter. "How's Two-Bit?"

"Patched up," Annie shrugged. "Mostly slept through the night. Still a moron." She flicked her gaze to Sandy's face and leaned forward on the counter beside her. "What happened four years ago?"

Sandy almost laughed. _Almost_ , thankfully.

Because she wasn't sure there was a right way to tell a story she'd been trying to erase for four years. She wasn't sure if last night was the closure she'd been looking for or not, and now she wasn't even sure that closure was what she wanted. She'd spent four years trying to tell herself it was over, and then she'd seen Sodapop and she'd started wishing that it wasn't, and she hated that.

She hated that she couldn't tell this story and convince herself that things had ended the way they had to.

Sandy glanced at Annie and sighed. "I had a son," she said. "And I had to leave town."

And she knew that was saying enough.

Annie bit her lip and turned to face her, and Sandy got the feeling she was putting that together with what she remembered from four years ago. "How long…"

"We dated a little over two years, and I've spent the past four years atoning," she said wryly. "It's ancient history." It was too quiet in the diner, and she ran her finger over a chip in the counter.

"Well-" Annie bumped her shoulder into Sandy's as she stood up- "Ya do your job a hell of a lot better than Debbie, so I'm glad you're here." She flashed her a grin and strode away to pile plates onto a tray.

"Hey!" Sandy followed at her heels and reached for the tray as Annie picked it up. She tried her best to look upset, but she got the feeling she was failing miserably. "That's my table!"

Annie shrugged, but her mouth curled into a wicked smile. "It was."

"Table thief," she called after the redhead and threw a dry dish towel at her retreating back before shaking her head and leaning her elbows back on the counter.

So Annie was helping another table when the second group of the day walked in with their heads down, and Sandy was left alone to mop up the mess she'd made.

She bit her thumbnail and narrowed her eyes as Ponyboy approached the counter.

"I, uh." She cleared her throat. There was a girl standing next to Ponyboy, lingering by his side but looking almost as lost as Sandy felt, and Sandy had to wonder how this encounter was realistically going to end. She sighed. "What can I do for you?"

She didn't want to know, she didn't want to know, she didn't-

Ponyboy looked from the girl next to him to the floor. "Two-Bit wanted ya to know he's doin' okay, despite all his whinin', and… " He hesitated, and Sandy saw him squirm just a little bit before going on and sighing. "And he says thanks."

Sandy blinked. "I… Yeah," she nodded and then smiled wryly. "Those the words he used?"

Ponyboy scratched the back of his neck and let out a huff that might have been a laugh. "Not exactly, no."

She nodded and watched another group find its way to a booth with furrowed brows before turning back to scrutinize the seventeen-year-old in front of her. The first thing she'd noticed was how much taller he'd gotten- and it had taken her awhile to shake the incredulity that he was taller than her now- but he'd retained some of the awkwardness she remembered from his early teenage years, although she supposed that could be a product of the situation.

There was something in the way he held himself, though, that made her pause, something in his eyes that told her he was looking for more answers than he was letting on, and she didn't think she liked it.

She grabbed at a dish towel that had been left on the counter just for something to do with her hands and cleared her throat. "Ya didn't have to come here," she sighed. "Not that I ain't happy Two-Bit's doin' okay, but I know coming here can't have been how you wanted to spend the day."

"Yeah, well." Ponyboy shrugged and glanced back at the girl standing next to him, and Sandy had to wonder where she factored into this. "We were in the neighborhood."

"The park?" Sandy raised her eyebrows at the embarrassed silence that answered the question. She wanted to ask if his brothers knew yet, she really did, but for some reason she didn't think that'd be her smartest decision. She took a quick breath and tried not to let herself look back at the floor as she wrung the dish towel in her hands. "Thank you, Ponyboy," she said more softly than she'd meant to.

He looked at the floor and nodded, and the girl beside him waved as he turned away.

"It was great to meet ya!" She called over her shoulder, and Sandy had to laugh, because she'd always thought Ponyboy didn't like greaser girls, but that girl was an East-sider through and through.

"You too," Sandy called back to the girl with a cautious wave. She didn't look back at the door until she heard the bell ring as it closed, and she watched them amble through the parking lot with furrowed brows as Annie hurried up to her.

"So how'd that go?" She asked, watching Sandy as she held an empty tray under her arm and strode for the kitchen.

Sandy shook her head as she grabbed the tray from Annie. "It… wasn't bad," she said with a laugh and something close to a shrug in Annie's direction. "Ponyboy said Two-Bit's fine but whiney."

Annie nodded solemnly. "Business as usual, then."

Sandy looked up in time to see a rowdy group make its way into the diner, this time full of unfamiliar faces, and she let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding as she nodded at Annie. "Business as usual," she said with a small sigh as she turned to show them to a booth.

 **. . .**

"All I'm saying-" Robin was motioning with her hands and trying to turn backwards to face him as they walked- "Is that dreams killed Jay Gatsby."

Ponyboy shook his head and looked past the girl in front of him. It was bright out, but there was gold rising in the distance, and the street felt eerily quiet, especially for the east side. She was walking backwards in the middle of the empty street, watching him kick a stone along the road as they rambled along.

Ponyboy kept his eyes on the colors stretching across the skyline. "He wasn't killed by his _dreams_ ," he sighed without looking at her. "It was-"

"The American dream, yeah." Somehow she managed to say it like they hadn't spent almost an entire month debating the same thing.

They'd been paired together for a thematic project on _The Great Gatsby_ at the beginning of the year, and it had been a little like putting two people in a burning room and asking them to discuss what the fire was supposed to mean. And the resulting project had betrayed that; it had been messy, and rushed, and hilariously contradicting, but somewhere along the way they'd fallen into a routine of making messes work.

So there they were a month later, debating the semantics of the American dream and tripping over cracks in the street.

Ponyboy glanced ahead at Robin in time to see her walk backwards into a pothole, and they were both laughing as he helped haul her back to her feet and she fell into stride beside him. Ponyboy raised his eyebrows.. "See, that was the American dream's fault," he deadpanned.

Robin laughed but shook her head determinedly. "I just think-" she motioned vaguely with her hands and stuttered. "There's a difference between following dreams and living by 'em," she decided after a moment of searching.

Ponyboy stole a glance at her and furrowed his brow. The brown of her hair looked gold in the late-afternoon sun, and the knees of her jeans were splotchy with dust. She was kicking the ground, scuffing her shoes on the dirt and pretending like she couldn't feel his eyes on her. He laughed softly. "I'll believe ya once you can tell me the difference," he conceded, fishing in his pocket for a cigarette out of habit.

She rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth was quirked up. "You don't smoke anymore."

"You say that like I've got a choice," he muttered, taking his hand out of his coat pocket. Darry had been on his case about smoking since last school year.

She laughed into the ground and then twisted her mouth into a frown at the setting sun. "I gotta get home- My ma's gonna skin me." He nodded, and she motioned down the street and broke into a jog. She looked over her shoulder and waved a little clumsily. "Good luck with your brother!"

He waved back but sighed as he watched her go.

He was about a seven minute's walk away from his house, which meant that he technically didn't have an excuse for staying out much longer, but he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do once he got back.

He kicked a stone as he walked back down the way he'd come and prayed to God that Sodapop wasn't going to ask where he'd been for the past two hours, because he didn't think that "on a surprise trip to Rosie's Diner" was a good answer to that question. But then it wasn't like he'd actually know, because Soda had very ardently not said anything about Sandy since she'd come back other than that he was _fine_ , which took a lot of effort not to blatantly laugh at.

The rock skittered down the road turning off to his neighborhood, and he took a few steps to catch up with it before kicking it again.

He knew that there were things his brothers didn't tell him, and he was grudgingly okay with that. But he hated that Sodapop had chosen now of all times to stay quiet, because four years ago when Sandy had left a mess in her wake he'd been anything but _fine._

He stood on the sidewalk a few seconds as he approached his driveway. His house stood, as ever, in all its shabby glory. Light filtered in through the windows over the porch, casting a waxy glow over cracked white paint, and Ponyboy guessed that meant someone was home, although the truck wasn't in the driveway.

He sighed before striding over to the back door and pulling it open resolutely. "Hellooo," he called into the depths of the house as he kicked his shoes off and wandered into the kitchen.

"Hey, Pony." Soda offered him a lazy grin as he joined him in the kitchen. He glanced at the window and noted the setting sun. "Where ya been?"

Ponyboy tried not to make a face as he answered as casually as he could. "Park."

Sodapop raised an eyebrow and waited a beat for him to go on, but was met with silence. "Alright…" He casted Ponyboy a strange look but it melted into a teasing smile. "Were ya alone?"

Ponyboy pushed his way further into the kitchen and tried to shrug. "Not really- How's Two-Bit?"

Soda shrugged and motioned towards the empty couch in the living room. "Probably still alive. He was gone when I got back from work." He pulled open the ice-box and stuck his head further inside than he probably needed to. "Ya eat yet?" He called from inside the ice-box.

Ponyboy watched him rummage through the fridge and prayed that there was going to be no food dye involved in the making of whatever he came up with. "I ate at the drive-in," he said, trying not to sound too relieved.

Soda emerged from the fridge with a carton of chocolate milk, a bowl of pancake batter leftover from breakfast, and a grin. "Too bad," he said as he turned to rummage through the cabinets. "I know how much ya love my cooking," he said over his shoulder with a wicked grin.

Ponyboy laughed, but it felt forced even to him, and Soda turned to face him fully as he closed the cabinet. "What's up?" He asked, and Ponyboy almost laughed at the irony of Sodapop being concerned about _him_.

"Nothing." Ponyboy pulled at a hangnail on his thumb and glanced away from Soda. The silence writhed uncomfortably around them, and he sighed and decided that it was probably better to get everything out in the open.

"I stopped at Rosie's Diner earlier," he said without looking at Sodapop. "To see Annie."

If he didn't know Soda so well, Ponyboy would say he did a decent job of acting casual, but as it was Sodapop looked like he'd just been electrocuted and was trying to pretend he hadn't.

Soda bounced his fingers on the counter and nodded. "She doin' okay?" He asked with a fake nonchalance that made Ponyboy want to smack him.

Instead, he watched Sodapop look anywhere but at him and ran a hand through his hair. "Annie's fine, but Soda, I-" he sighed and tried to get Sodapop to meet his gaze, to no avail. Soda fidgeted but couldn't really escape, backed as he was against the counter, so Ponyboy shook his head exasperatedly.

"Ya don't have to act like you're fine with all this," he told Soda as gently as he could given that he was also considering smacking him upside the head.

"I don't have to act-" Sodapop crossed his arms and jutted out his chin- "Because I _am_ fine, Ponyboy. So you can tell everyone to stop being so goddamn careful."

Ponyboy sighed and surveyed his brother for a beat, noting the eyes darting around the room and the nervous bouncing of his fingers that always gave him away. (Nervous finger-tapping was also the reason Soda technically owed Steve three hundred dollars from a single poker game, but that was a story for another time.)

"Okay," he said, crossing his arms and deciding that a less gentle approach was needed. "I also saw Sandy at the diner. Looked nice in her waitress uniform. Didn't look real happy to see me, but-"

" _Okay._ " Sodapop held up his hands and tried to squeeze past Ponyboy into the dining room, and this time Ponyboy let him. Sodapop reached the table and then turned back to face him, looking more lost than Ponyboy had ever seen him. "Okay," he said again, shaking his head. "I ain't got a clue what I'm supposed to be right now other than confused."

He sat heavily down at the table and ran a hand through the hair at the back of his head, and Ponyboy wondered if maybe he should have waited until the rest of the guys were there to make Soda talk. He swallowed and hovered at the edge of the table, because it felt like an extreme role reversal to be on the receiving end of a conversation like this.

 _Tick_

He tried to ignore the clock ticking above the fireplace and swallowed. It was too quiet in the house.

Ponyboy surveyed his brother at the table and sighed. "It's lookin' like she ain't gonna leave before the past catches up to her," he said quietly.

Sodapop nodded a little blankly without looking up from the table and then scoffed. "God, she's got a job and everything," he said, rubbing his eyes wearily. He looked up and shook his head. "She ain't leaving soon enough."

 _Tick_

Ponyboy pulled a chair out cautiously and nodded. "Ya want her gone?" He asked, because he wasn't sure whether Soda was trying to convince himself or everyone else. He wasn't sure either of them knew which.

Sodapop shook his head and laughed more harshly than Ponyboy was used to hearing from him. "Would ya believe me if I said I don't know?" He asked, tone somewhere between bitter and wry.

"Yeah," Ponyboy sighed, sinking into the chair across from his brother, "I would."

 _Tick_

Sodapop shook his head again, furrowing his brows and looking past the windows on the porch. "And it ain't- I can't _not_ hate her bein' back, after everything she did," he said, but the words sounded too practiced to be convincing. "And I do, sometimes. I mean, I hate goin' into town and worrying that I'll see her at the store, and I hate seein' everyone being so careful about it, but then-" He let out a puff of air that might have been a laugh. "I can't hate her," he said distantly. "I've tried."

Ponyboy sucked in a long breath and scrutinized his brother.

He didn't hate Sandy, either. He'd been fourteen and sympathetic to a fault when she'd left, and all he could think about when he tried to hate her was the way she'd looked at Sodapop. And he knew that he wasn't the same as he'd been at fourteen, but he'd never quite managed to shake the advice he'd been given to not turn hard or cold even when the people around him did, so no, he couldn't hate Sandy, but he really, really wanted Sodapop to.

He wanted Sodapop to hate her, because he was the one she'd hurt and he _should_ hate her. But then, he wouldn't be Sodapop if he started hating her.

So he couldn't tell his brother to hate the girl who broke his heart.

Ponyboy looked down at the table. "Think you'll see her again?" He asked, because it felt like all there was to say.

Sodapop sighed softly. "Dunno," he said plainly. "Still ain't sure I want to."

"Ain't in the mood for doin' it all again?" Ponyboy asked, not quite sure if he was talking about seeing her or trying to forgive her, and not quite wanting to know which.

Sodapop laughed at that. "Not a second time," he said. "Not after four years and God knows how many unopened letters. I can't do it a second time."

 _Tick_

Ponyboy nodded at him, again struck with how _weird_ it was to be the one charged with making Soda talk, rather than the other way around. "Alright," he said decisively, not quite sure what else to say. "You gonna need a hand with dinner, or…"

Soda's answering grin looked more relieved than anything as he got up, but at least it looked genuine. "We're making pancakes," he declared as he pushed his chair out, "and they're gonna have every color of the goddamn rainbow."

Ponyboy laughed as he followed Sodapop into the kitchen, suddenly relieved that he'd had the foresight to eat earlier.

He watched Soda remove the caps of four different colors of food dye and tried not to feel nauseous. "Good use of old pancake batter," he said solemnly. "Very resourceful."

Sodapop, nothing if not ostentatious, flashed him an increasingly-smug grin as he added each color.

So there was a rather ugly shade of red-brown batter splattered around the counter and on a good portion of Sodapop's shirt when Darry got home, and the house was noisy with yelling and laughter and probably some profanity when Steve waltzed in a little later, and the night actually shaped up to be halfway decent, if not full of burnt pancakes.

Steve was lighting a cigarette and trying to be discreet about scrutinizing Sodapop. "So," he said, blowing out a lopsided ring of smoke, "The Dingo's back open."

"It was closed?" Ponyboy set the plates by the sink for Darry to take over with a clatter, because he wasn't going to get roped into doing dishes when it wasn't his turn again.

Steve rolled his eyes and took a drag of his cigarette. "Health code violation or some shit," he said dismissively.

Ponyboy's fingers itched for a cigarette. "What a dumb reason to close a joint," he commented dryly.

Steve made a face and turned back to Sodapop as Ponyboy dropped into an armchair near the group in the living room. "Anyway, Evie says she's going with a big group of girls to celebrate the re-opening." His tone was casual, but he watched Sodapop too carefully for any of them to not know where this was headed. "Anyway, ya should come," he said. "Meet some guys, chase some skirts."

Ponyboy could have rolled his eyes- could have, but fortunately didn't. Because Steve wasn't exactly subtle, but then, he was making an effort. And ordinarily, it wouldn't be significant, because he knew that the fact that Sodapop hadn't actually been in a relationship for four years didn't mean that he'd avoided girls by any means. But Steve was testing the waters, prodding just a little bit to see how he was faring with everything, and they all knew it.

Sodapop bounced his fingers against his leg and furrowed his brows. "No chance of the fuzz showing?"

Steve winced. "Minimal," he said dismissively. "C'mon, man, it-"

"I'll be there- What time?"

"Uh- We could head over once we get off work, say eight-ish?" Steve hid his surprise with a puff of his cigarette, and Ponyboy watched the smoke float tantalizingly towards him with a scowl.

Sodapop hesitated. "I think Pony's got a track meet-"

Ponyboy knew it wouldn't score him any points with Steve (not that he particularly cared) if he was the reason Sodapop didn't go, so he held up a hand. "It's fine, Soda. It's a small meet, and I only got two events," he said quickly.

Sodapop nodded, and neither Steve nor Ponyboy commented on the second of disappointment on his part, because he was flashing Steve a showy grin a second later. "I'll be there," he said again, this time with marginally less conviction.

Ponyboy sighed and looked from Steve's shit-eating grin to Soda's cautiously excited eyes. "Y'all have fun," he said dryly, hauling himself out of the chair. "I'm gonna go to bed."

And as he trudged to his room, he tried not to think about Sandy Owens and a four-year-old with achingly familiar sunshine-and-whiskey colored eyes.

 _Tick_

* * *

 _Oh, you're giving me the same old line,_

 _I'm wond'ring why,_

 _You hurt me then, you're back again,_

 _No, no, not a second time_

\- The Beatles, _Not a Second Time_

* * *

 **A/N: YOU GUYS. Thank you SO MUCH for all the feedback last chapter! I cannot even express how awesome it was to read all of your reviews and see what everyone's thinking. :)** **Thanks so much for taking a chance on this story, it honestly means a ton to know that there are people reading and enjoying this!**

 **Anyway, I know that not that much necessarily happened in this chapter, but I promise that it's important to the plot. ;)**

 **Y'all's reviews are my driving life-force, for real. ;) Thanks so much for reading!**


	4. The Same Old Song

**A/N: Okay, so I know it's been forever and I'm so, so sorry; honestly, finals week and rehearsals have been kicking my butt, but I promise that this story will be completed, no matter how long it takes. Thank you guys so much for all your feedback and support! I really hope that you like this chapter, even though it's indecently late. ;)**

 **Don't Think Twice, It's Alright**

 _Chapter Four_

 _The Same Old Song_

* * *

The night was filled with bad music and cheap booze as they clambered out of the car.

The lot in front of them was littered with cheap cars in various states of deterioration and cigarette smoke, and of all the run-down, raucous, and shabbily alluring places in Tulsa, Sandy's least favorite had to be The Dingo.

She wrinkled her nose as a man with booze on his breath staggered past too closely for her to be entirely okay with it. "How'd this joint manage to reopen?"

Beside her, Annie shrugged. "Necessary evil, I s'pose," she said as she surveyed her make-up in the grimy mirror of Sandy's car. She raised an eyebrow and met Sandy's gaze in the mirror. "I ain't complaining none."

"I know," Sandy said a little wryly. She smoothed the bottom of her skirt and surveyed the full parking lot with furrowed brows. "Where d'you think-"

"Sandy Owens!"

Sandy whirled on the gravel to face the overly-exuberant smile of Kathy Lynch. "Hey, Kath," she said with a resigned laugh. "It's been a while."

Kathy tossed her dark hair out of her eyes and flicked ashes from her cigarette. "Good to see ya again," she said brightly as she caught up to Sandy and Annie. "I'm glad Annie called. How're things with your kid?"

They set off towards the source of the blaring music, and Sandy's mouth quirked into a smile. "Real good, actually. How've you been?"

Kathy shrugged noncommittally and took another drag of her cigarette. "Same old, I guess." She bumped her shoulder into Annie's lightly as they walked. "Been seein' more of Annie than Two-Bit lately, but she's better company anyway."

"Ain't a high standard, though, is it?" Annie said wryly.

The Dingo loomed in front of them, the same dilapidated one-story building Sandy had been too old for since she was sixteen, and she braced herself for the general chaos as they approached the brunt of the crowd.

When Sandy glanced back to the women behind her, she was met with a smile as sharp as the acrid cigarette fumes that hung over the lot. "Should I grab us some drinks, or should I wait for someone to offer?" Kathy asked with a sly smile.

Sandy tugged her skirt lower on her leg and wondered again what she was doing there. "You can go ahead, Kath," she said with a laugh. "I got work tomorrow, anyway."

Annie scoffed dismissively. "I got work, too."

Sandy bit her lip and decided that it was more painless to surrender now. "Okay," she said resignedly, "but I got a four-year-old who wakes up at the crack of dawn."

Kathy's face split into a grin. "I can drink to that," she declared as she stalked off to find drinks.

Sandy watched her go with a familiarly wary smile. In her peripheral vision, she watched Annie lean back against the hood of a decrepit truck and scrutinize her. She gave it a beat before speaking up. "What?"

"Nothing." Annie shrugged none-too-innocently.

Sandy rolled her eyes and turned to fully face her friend. "What?"

Annie shrugged again. "It's just-" She crossed her arms. "Okay. So you-" Annie rested a pointing finger on Sandy's chest, and Sandy got the distinct impression that the conversation wasn't headed anywhere good. "You've got a kid."

Sandy furrowed her brows and nodded. "Stellar observation."

Annie brushed her off and continued. "And he's… Four? Four and a half?"

"Just turned four," Sandy nodded again, a little puzzled.

"Right, so then," Annie went on without reservation, "you haven't been on a date for what, five years?"

Sandy groaned and pushed away from the truck she'd been leaning on. "You're relentless," she declared, running a hand back through her hair and wishing a little that she wasn't having that conversation. "And I-" She stuttered. "I've been out with people since James was born."

"Really," Annie said flatly. It wasn't a question.

"I- yeah! I mean, there- there was… Okay, so I haven't had very much time-"

"Ah, no! You're making- Hey, Kath, come tell Sandy this is gonna be good for her!" Annie motioned for Kathy as she emerged from the crowd.

"This is gonna be good for you," Kathy said dutifully as she hurried over. She turned to Annie. "Why is this gonna be good for her?"

Sandy sighed as Annie grinned triumphantly. "It's gonna be good for her," she said, "to get out instead of moping for the next five years."

Understanding clouded Kathy's expression, and she indelicately held out a can of beer. "C'mon, Owens," she said decidedly. "No time like the present, and all that."

And Sandy couldn't explain the knot in her stomach as she gingerly accepted the beer, couldn't explain the mess of memories demanding notice, because how could she explain it to them when they thought they knew how everything had gone down and were still on her side.

Sandy glanced from the noisy, shabby lot in front of her to the two girls beside her and laughed. "No time like the present," she agreed.

Which, of course, was when everything went to hell.

"Is that-" Annie's gaze was on something over Sandy's shoulder, wide-eyed and discerning all at once.

Kathy put a hand almost protectively on Sandy's arm as she followed Annie's gaze. "Don't look now," she muttered, taking another long drag of her cigarette.

Sandy looked, and then she wished she hadn't.

She tugged at the edge of her skirt again and bit her lip. "I should probably be headin' home…"

"Ha," Kathy said flatly, blowing out a puff of smoke and crossing her arms. "No."

Sandy fidgeted with can of beer Kathy had dutifully thrust at her and sighed. "Did y'all know this was gonna happen?" She asked resignedly.

Annie cackled. "Nah, but I can't say I ain't happy about it."

Sandy scuffed her shoes against the dust settled on the ground, took a reluctant sip of her lukewarm beer, and watched an unfortunately familiar group amble through the opposite end of the lot.

Kathy inhaled and smiled lazily. "Love the smell of unfinished business," she declared.

"Get used to it." Sandy tracked the Curtis crowd of three with her eyes and made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. "I wear unfinished business like perfume."

He'd seen her, she knew. He was moving away too quickly not to be running from something.

Annie cackled and tugged Sandy's wrist closer to the crowd. "Ain't that the truth."

And the world didn't stop around them, because that would have been too convenient; instead, Sodapop retreated to the far side of the lot and Sandy shuffled after Kathy and Annie into the crowd full of bad dancing and drunken rants, and the night marched on as the two groups stayed dangerously parallel to each other.

 **. . .**

Midnight in Tulsa was a surreal thing, after five years.

The cigarette smoke that hung over the pavement seemed too still, and the night seemed a little sharper than she remembered, a little more _real_ , but she was starting to think that Tulsa had always been that way.

Sandy was starting to hate the phrase "after five years."

It was like listening to a scratched record a hundred times and then hearing it live. It was like leaning against the side of her car and ignoring a song blaring in the distance and a boy stumbling his way over to stand behind her.

Sandy shivered.

She didn't know who was supposed to speak first; she didn't know if she was supposed to speak at all.

There was a crash like breaking glass from somewhere across the lot. An old Elvis record blared through the crowd.

"Why are you back here?" His voice was quiet, more subdued than she'd have expected.

She bit her lip and guessed that he wasn't talking about The Dingo. "My dad had a heart attack."

He waited a beat for her to go on, and when she didn't spoke again. "Why are you staying?"

She swallowed. "Would you believe me if I said I didn't know?"

There was a huff of surprised laughter. "Yeah," Sodapop said almost ruefully, although Sandy wasn't quite sure what she'd said to warrant it. "I would."

She pushed off of the side of the car and wrapped her arms around herself. He swayed just a little bit on his feet, and she wondered how many drinks it had taken to convince him to talk to her. Her gaze caught on the cigarette between his fingers. "You don't smoke."

"I didn't five years ago."

Sandy nodded. "Fair enough." She wondered how many drinks it would take her to be okay with this conversation. "Sodapop-" she ran a hand through her hair and sighed. "What do you need? I know you ain't over here for the company."

He blew out a puff of smoke and looked out over the lot. "You left at the beginning of the song," he said, his voice a little distant and a little broken.

She shrugged, but the gesture came off too mechanically casual, like she'd been practicing it for too long. She guessed she had been practicing for too long. "Never liked Elvis like you did."

His gaze flicked to her face, scrutinizing, and she watched the ground with interest. "That all?"

She inhaled and hated the way her breath stuttered in her chest. "That's all there is," she said, and the words felt hollow as she watched the hurt flash across his face.

Sodapop didn't move, and suddenly everything was too still again.

The wind carried the crooning song across the lot, and Sandy closed her eyes. "We had our first dance to this song," she said softly, more of an admittance of something he already knew she remembered than a memory.

And she was fifteen years old, telling him not to waste his money on the jukebox inside the drive-in concession, and he was just shy of sixteen, holding out his hand with that grin that told her she was done for before he'd said anything.

He turned away from her in a hurry and squared his shoulders like he'd just received a blow, and she guessed he had. "This place ain't changed much since then," he said, nodding at something in the distance.

Sandy looked at her hands and tried to ignore the lump in her throat. "A lot's changed."

"It didn't have to." Sodapop watched her out of the corner of his eye, and she could only shake her head.

She didn't know how to tell him that she'd spent the past five years telling herself the same thing. She didn't know how to ask him if he carried his hurt the way she carried her guilt, if he ever felt like he couldn't breathe under the weight of everything she'd never told him.

So instead she bit her lip and turned away from his searching gaze and said again, "A lot's changed," and didn't turn back to watch him leave.

Sandy kicked at the dust on the ground and wondered whether hurting Sodapop Curtis would ever get easier.

Annie had scampered back over to the car almost as soon as Sodapop had left, timing which Sandy guessed was less coincidence than it was a result of light stalking on Annie's part. The redhead watched her searchingly for a beat before growing impatient. "Well?"

Sandy rasped out a laugh and shook her head. "Nothing new, Annie."

"You two talkin' is something new, darling." Annie pushed herself onto the hood of the car beside Sandy.

Sandy nodded a little blankly. "It's five years too late for talking," she said, and the song that had been drifting through the lot cut off abruptly as shouts echoed across the crowd. Sandy craned her neck to see past the rows of rusting cars. "What's goin' on over there?"

Annie shrugged noncommittally beside her. "Some dumbass picked a fight with a coupla- well, I guess we don't say 'Soc's' anymore, but…"

Sandy squinted at the source of the commotion. "Is that-" She groaned more out of habit than anything else. "Annie, that's Steve Randall."

The yells continued as guys from both sides of the fight surged forward, and then all bets were off as to whether they'd join or stop the fight as the Curtis crowd lunged toward Steve.

Annie took a delicate sip of beer and shrugged lightly. "I know." She glanced behind her at the brawl and then turned back to give Sandy another noncommittal expression. "He's been doin' this a lot lately."

"Steve?" Annie nodded shortly, and Sandy blinked. "Why?"

"I don't know, man." Annie set her beer down with a sigh and slid off the hood of the car. "Could be about his father, could be about the Curtis gang bein' down two guys, could be just because he can." She pinned Sandy with an inscrutable gaze. "Why do you care?"

Sandy flicked her eyes back to the crowd, where it looked like someone had managed to tear Steve off whoever had been dumb enough to trade blows with him.

She bit her lip. "I- don't. It's just-" She sighed. "I used to care, ya know?"

Annie's gaze softened. "Old habits," she suggested.

"Old habits," she agreed warily, this time not meeting Annie's gaze. "I guess tellin' yourself you shouldn't care doesn't mean you stop caring."

Annie made a contemplative hum and offered a pointedly quiet, "ya could've told him that." She glanced over her shoulder and blanched.

"He didn't need to hear it." Sandy followed Annie's gaze and then turned her eyes to watch the ground with more interest than it really warranted. "He seems happy, anyway," she said, pretending it didn't sting a little to see Sodapop attached at the mouth to a girl she'd never met.

Annie winced. "You're not drunk enough for this," she declared in a demeanor drastically different from the one she'd used to hold the previous conversation. She took hold of Sandy's hand and dragged her a few steps forward. "We're going to find Kathy and more beer."

Sandy shook her head clear of everything that wasn't Annie, Kathy, and apparently more beer, and groaned. "We both have an early shift tomorrow, Annie," she protested. "And I got a 5-year-old who wakes with the sun to entertain."

"Fine-" Annie tugged her arm toward the lot. "Make your middle-school health teacher proud by abstaining from alcohol; I don't care." She pointed a finger at Sandy's chest and raised her eyebrows. "But _stop_ moping."

Sandy laughed softly as she trudged after Annie. "Yes, sir."

And they did find Kathy, and by extension they also found more beer, and Sandy had probably missed her chance to make any health teacher proud when she had James but at least stayed sober enough to drive home.

And Sandy definitely didn't look over her shoulder to take note of whether the brunette girl who looked just endearingly bold enough to be Sodapop's type hung around for the rest of the night (which she did) or search the crowd one more time to see whether Sodapop left the party with the girl on his arm (which he didn't).

On the whole, at the end of the night Sandy surveyed the fast-emptying lot illuminated by her headlights and could only hope that it would be the last time.

 **. . .**

The hospital smelled like cigarette smoke.

Sandy bit her lip and nodded at a nurse with perfectly applied makeup and told herself that she should be paying attention to the words coming out of the nurse's perfectly red mouth instead of things like makeup and cigarette smoke.

But things like "atherosclerosis," and "coronary heart disease," and "he didn't tell us he had a daughter" were hard to listen to.

So the hospital smelled like cigarettes, and the nurse's lipstick was perfect, and Sandy hadn't the foggiest clue why her father was in the hospital, just something about a heart attack and a growing notion that she was going to regret this.

A small tug on her jeans indicated that the four-year-old her mother had bullied her into taking along was growing impatient, and Sandy bent down to scoop him up a little warily.

When she looked back up, the nurse had stopped talking and was watching her expectantly, and Sandy winced as she settled James on her hip. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" She asked, having at the very least the grace to be bashful.

The nurse gave her a manufactured smile. "I asked if you'd like me to lead you to his room."

"Oh, uh, yeah." Sandy ran her free hand through her hair and sighed. "Thanks."

The halls were an unnerving combination of unfortunate wallpaper and linoleum and the smell of what Sandy thought seemed too much like ammonia. James waved obliviously at weary-looking doctors as they passed, and when she followed the nurse around the corner, and Sandy felt a little like she was walking to the gallows.

The hospital halls passed in a blur of polished linoleum and ill-advised wallpaper, and Sandy couldn't quite remember when they'd stopped walking or how they'd gotten there, but suddenly she was standing in front of a curtained bed wanting desperately to be somewhere else.

The nurse cleared her throat as she finished saying something, and Sandy startled. "Sorry?" She asked with a grimace, which earned her a strange look.

"Visiting hours end at five," the nurse repeated with something close to bemused sympathy on her face, "and y'all can feel free to pull the curtains aside whenever you're ready."

Sandy swallowed. "Thank you. I- uh, I'll do that," she said as steadily as she could, and then she was setting a protesting James down lightly before pulling aside the flimsy fabric curtain as the nurse retreated.

She took a miniscule step forward, and her father…

Her father looked the part of a middle-aged white man with coronary artery disease, and Sandy thought that was saying enough.

He watched her with an unreadable expression, and she did her best to do the same, but his gaze caught on James, and she stiffened.

"Dad." She nodded sharply and took James' hand, and Sandy thanked every deity she knew of that he seemed to be just tired enough to make this easy.

Her father's gaze was calculating, less expressive than she'd expected but every bit as cold. "Your mother told you to come," he said, and they both knew it wasn't a question.

Sandy cleared her throat. The white light above the cubicle flickered once. "This is James," she said. James flashed an endearing grin. _This is the grandson you didn't want to meet_ , she didn't say.

Her father didn't look at James. "Why are you here?" He asked, and Sandy hated that it stung because it was what she'd been expecting.

"People keep asking me that," she sighed. "You had a heart attack."

There was a huff that in other context could be called a laugh. "You're not here for me," he decided, and then paused almost contemplatively. "Don't tell me you're here for him."

He didn't say who "him" implied, and Sandy didn't ask.

She smoothed James' honey-blonde hair with a hand and shook her head. "I'm not here for him." _I'm not here for you._

The quiet stretched to a length Sandy wasn't comfortable with. James tugged impatiently at her hand but was mercifully quiet. "Right, then." Sandy cleared her throat and bent to pick up James with a wry twist to her mouth. "It's been a pleasure."

She retreated toward the curtain with the wriggling four-year-old in her arms but stopped as her father spoke again. "You're going to have to forgive me someday," he said with as much conviction as she guessed he could muster.

Sandy turned and looked over James' shoulder. "Someday is a long time," she said quietly, and then trudged back past the curtain as James looked up at her with an absentmindedly thoughtful expression.

"That was my grandpa?" He asked, more for clarification, Sandy knew, than curiosity.

She sighed. "Yeah, kiddo. He ain't feelin' so good right now, though."

"Oh." James looked thoughtful. "Did the doctors give him medicine?"

Sandy nodded and ruffled the mess of curls James hand pressed under her chin. "Yeah, they did."

"Oh," James said again, seeming satisfied. "That's good."

Sandy smiled lightly at the boy in her arms as she headed for the hospital lobby. She was approaching the nurse to check out when the hospital door was flung open and Sandy barely had time to reflect that she was starting to hate swinging doors revealing too-familiar faces before a group clambered in and spotted her.

Sandy could have cried. Twice in as many days was far too often to run into any of the Curtis gang.

She stepped warily toward the counter to say tell the nurse she'd finished her visiting and did her best to keep her head down, although she knew they'd already seen her.

The woman at the desk gave her a small smile and nod as she clicked her pen, and Sandy decided that fleeing the hospital as quickly as possible would be the best course of action.

The group seemed occupied making a commotion near the door, and Sandy breathed a sigh of relief that a) Sodapop wasn't with them and b) no one seemed to be in immediate mortal danger. She'd never known the Curtis gang to come to the hospital for anything short of death, but from the awkward angle of Steve Randall's arm, she guessed they'd had trouble fixing it themselves.

Evie was hovering around Steve with both concern and anger blazing in her eyes and Sandy knew that four years ago she'd have been right beside her, and she still wasn't sure what to think of that.

She strode for the door and tried with everything in her not to look back.

Of course, Evie wouldn't stand for that; she didn't like to make things easy, Sandy reflected wryly as she saw the girl's reflection behind her in the window by the door.

Sandy slowed and waited for the inevitable onslaught, but the silence stretched until she gave in and turned around.

Evie looked like she was doing her best to look bored, studying her chipped nail polish with a fierce glare. She glanced up and met Sandy's gaze. "You ain't got an idiot boyfriend," she said plainly, and Sandy blinked, "so what're you doing here?"

Sandy furrowed her brows. "I- my dad. He had a heart attack."

Evie rolled her dramatically-outlined eyes. "The whole town knows that." she said shortly. "What were ya doing visiting the bastard?"

Sandy blinked, and James settled more comfortably onto her shoulder. "I… don't know," she said honestly.

She hadn't expected Evie to care enough to hate her father, after five years.

Evie crossed her arms like she was trying to make herself more angry than she was, which puzzled Sandy.

"Right," Evie said, turning on her heel. "Well, give him my worst regards."

Sandy nodded a little dazedly at Evie's back. "I… probably won't, but-" she almost laughed. "He knows."

And she glanced back into the den of vinyl chairs in the lobby in time to see Darryl Curtis tear his eyes away from the sleepy four-year-old in her arms with something somewhere between suspicion and realization in his eyes.

Sandy turned abruptly toward the door and prayed to God that Darryl thought worse enough of her to think he was wrong.

* * *

 _Now it's the same old song,_

 _But with a different meaning_

\- Four Tops, _It's the Same Old Song_

* * *

 **A/N: So… disclaimer: the only knowledge I have of coronary health care in the 1960's is from a scholarly article I read ten minutes before writing this, so I'm sorry for the inevitable inaccuracies.**

 **Anyway, it's New Year's Eve and I literally wrote almost all of this today, so I'm also sorry for the inevitable devolution in quality. ;) Anyway, I hope y'all had/have a great holiday season, and I hope to maybe hear from you in the comments?**

 **Thanks so much for reading!**


	5. Blowin' in the Wind

**A/N: Okay, so for now I'm just going to say that I'm so sorry for the wait, and there's more at the bottom.**

 **Anyway: there are a few mentions of the war and the draft lottery in this chapter, and obviously i don't want to patronize anyone but if y'all want some general background that I didn't know until like last year: the Vietnam draft chose men by drawing birthdays and using that order to determine draft numbers, so if say August 14 was drawn first, the men with that birthday would be in the first string of men sent.**

 **Also, for any history buffs, I know the timing of the draft lottery is off, and I hate it too, but I couldn't find a way to work out the exact dates, so bear with me on this one.**

 **Don't Think Twice, It's Alright**

 _Chapter 5_

 _Blowin' in the Wind_

* * *

Of all the ways Sandy expected to spend her Friday shift, hiding from Evie in the kitchen wasn't one of them.

It was quiet for a Friday night, probably a side-effect of a party on the other side of town or something else that would inevitably be shut down before the night was over, and the diner wasn't deserted but Sandy also had nothing better to do than watch the door and bring out the occasional was nice, to an extent, to have a break from the usual Friday crowd, so it had come as something of a surprise when Sandy's vigilant door-watching was interrupted by Evie Ross shouldering her way through the swinging door and trudging to the counter.

She sat down heavily and crossed her arms as she watched Sandy like she was daring her to make a scene of it. Sandy didn't say anything as Evie's overstuffed purse thudded to the floor.

"Well." Evie's voice sounded like broken glass, but that was nothing new. "Ya gonna take my order?"

It took an embarrassingly long beat for Sandy to remember that she actually did have a job that she was probably doing very terribly. "Um." She cleared her throat. "What… can I get for you?"

Details were a little hazy, but she must have managed to take Evie's order without much issue because by the time she made it through the door to the kitchen and started breathing again she was clutching a crumpled order for a chocolate milkshake and fries.

Annie bounced into the kitchen to see Sandy eyeing the hollow under the counter contemplatively. "As far as hiding places go," she said wryly, "you could do better."

Sandy sighed. "Even Florida ain't far enough, apparently."

Annie quirked an eyebrow. "Thinkin' about leaving so soon?"

"Would you let me?"

"Ha," Annie said without humor. "No."

"Then switch tables with me," Sandy pleaded.

"Ha," Annie said again and offered nothing else but a poke to the kidney to get Sandy moving. "Go," she said sternly.

Sandy stumbled out of the kitchen and searched desperately for something to keep her busy. Her eyes caught on the rag still sitting on the edge of the counter and she steeled herself to approach the girl sitting beside it. Evie's eyes tracked the movement like a hawk tracks a rabbit, and Sandy swallowed as she turned her eyes to meet a scrutinizing frown. The coolness in Evie's green eyes made Sandy feel like she was 16 again as she searched for something to say.

After a measured beat of quiet, Sandy blew out a puff of air a tad dramatically and leaned forward against the counter. "How's Steve holdin' up, with the arm and all?"

Evie glanced up, took a slow sip from her water, and gave an unconvincingly brash shrug. "Still a dumbass, but I guess the arm'll heal."

"Right," Sandy nodded. She paused, poised to flee back to the kitchen, and sighed. "What're you doin' here, Evie?"

Evie's gaze rested sharply on her for a beat, and then her harsher features crumbled to reveal someone Sandy thought she almost recognized. "I don't know," Evie responded roughly.

Sandy released the rag she'd been clutching like a lifeline and searched Evie's gaze, but it didn't give anything away. She swallowed. "What happened?"

Evie was the only one at the counter, and Sandy knew she owed her at the very least a conversation. Evie dropped her gaze to the countertop and shook her head, wearing a bitter smile. They were both quiet as Evie's finger traced a crack in the checkered linoleum.

Evie inhaled just a little too sharply before looking up. "You talked to Sylvia since ya got back?"

Sandy didn't know what she'd been expecting, but that wasn't it. She tried to ignore the pang of guilt as she shook her head. "Nah," she said. "We never talked much." She and Sylvia had never _not_ gotten along, but even as Greaser girls, they'd run in different circles.

Evie nodded, eyes fixed on the fractured checker design of the counter. "Ya know her brother died in the war?"

"No." Sandy swallowed hard and shook her head. "That's…"

"It a drag," Evie declared roughly. "The whole thing."

Sandy blinked, because Evie was a lot of things, but she wasn't this flippant about human lives. She took a deep breath and pulled out a chair. "What's goin' on?"

Evie spared her a peripheral glance. "I didn't know where else to go," she said like it was a casual thing, her coming to Sandy for anything other than a good opportunity to glare. Evie laughed harshly. "See, 'cause I'd have told Sylvia, if I didn't think it'd be like rubbing salt in the wound, and y'know the guys ain't really good for anything other than beatin' up whatever's bothering you, and I can't go to Al because that's the problem, that I can't go to him-"

"Evie," Sandy said, feeling more shaken as Evie rambled because Evie _didn't_ ramble. "What's goin' on?"

Evie took a sulking sip of her milkshake and Sandy wondered how much she was wishing it was something stronger.

"Al was drafted a month ago," Evie said, and Sandy could swear she felt her heart stop beating.

Evie wasn't looking at Sandy, just gauging the weight of the silence, and she shook her head. "October twenty sixth. Seventh day drawn." She laughed softly. "An' God, you weren't here, but it was terrible. The guys were all at the Curtis place watchin' the TV and we were sitting in the living room trying to pretend they all had a chance of makin' it out of the war when the average guy there is nineteen years old." She bit her lip. "You weren't there, but, God, I wouldn't have wished it on ya."

Sandy felt too clumsy for this, like five years had taken her ability to say the right things, so she put an arm around Evie's shoulder and prayed to God that she wasn't overstepping.

"Evie, I'm so sorry-" she started, and she knew it wasn't what Evie wanted to hear, because the words "I'm sorry" had never once fixed anything important.

Evie shook her head. "Don't do that," she said, looking up fiercely. "Don't apologize for what happened before you apologize for not bein' here or bothering to call to see what any of the other guys' numbers were."

Sandy felt the cracks in her chest widen as Evie's words sunk in, because she could run from a lot of things but the reality of the war touching Tulsa wasn't one of them. Because Evie was right, and the youngness of nineteen didn't mean as much as victory to a draft lottery. But God, the idea of men being chosen to kill or to die by something as arbitrary as their birthdays and as cruel a chance as a lottery drawing…

Sandy bit her lip and searched Evie's face but relented after a beat, because Evie was nothing if not determined to make Sandy ask her herself.

She swallowed. "Who-"

"None of them've got draft notices yet. Pony's goin' to college, so he ain't got to worry. Two-Bit's and Steve's numbers are in the hundreds," Evie said like she was reciting something she'd thought about too much. "Darry's in the seventies." She didn't look at Sandy. "Soda's number eighteen."

Sandy blinked hard and looked down. "I know." She didn't look up, but she could feel the weight of Evie's gaze on her as the silence stretched into something fragile. She'd had to ask who got their notices, but after the lottery, the first days she'd checked in the line-up had been the birthdays of the people she'd thought back then that she'd never see again, because even after everything, everyone she had to lose was in Tulsa.

When Evie spoke again, her voice was softer. "You checked," she said, and it was more of an answer than a question but Sandy hated that it had to be asked in the first place.

"I had to."

She heard an exhale that could have been a laugh. "Nah. Ya didn't."

Sandy bit her thumbnail and scuffed her shoe against the tile floor. There was a smear of spilled milkshake and a spare fry on the floor beneath the counter. She sighed. "So what about Al?"

Evie traced her fingers against the countertop. "I haven't gotten a letter for a while."

"I'm-"

"Don't do that."

Sandy swallowed her apologies and nodded. She heard Annie drop something in the kitchen, but the clatter faded to stretched silence until Sandy spoke. "I'm sorry I wasn't here."

Evie laughed softly. "Me, too."

Sandy watched her for a beat before nodding, knowing that Evie was ready for the conversation to be over and unnecessary words were nothing if not deplorable to Evie, so she pushed herself out of her chair.

Evie followed her cue and gathered her overstuffed purse, but she paused after slinging it over her shoulder. "Sandy," she said over her shoulder with an unreadable expression, and Sandy tried not to tense up.

"Yeah," she said cautiously.

Evie's gaze searched hers for something Sandy wasn't sure she had before she continued. "'I'm sorry' means you'll be here next time."

"I know. I— I am." Sandy gave a miniscule nod and tried not to think too hard about how long she'd been running. She swallowed and met Evie's gaze. "I'm sorry."

Evie nodded once on her way out, and Sandy knew Evie believed apologies never fixed anything important, but as far as willingness to fix things goes, apologies were a good indicator.

 **. . .**

Sandy didn't know a lot about cars.

She knew her car had been a lot of things in the two years she'd had it: a place to blast music, a symbol of freedom, something that honestly ate up a lot more of her paycheck than she'd expected it to, a shuttle for James and his friends… The list went on. She also knew such necessities as how to put in a cassette or maybe even change a tire, but that was on a good day.

Presently, though, she didn't need any of her limited car knowledge to see that her Austin Mini Cooper was obviously, painfully broken down.

Sandy glared at the dashboard like it would tell her something she actually understood before climbing out of the car. She'd spent fifteen minutes of a half-hour drive trying to figure out if her engine had always sounded like that or if she was an idiot about to strand herself on a backroad with a hyper four year old in the backseat.

She'd spent the past ten minutes realizing she'd turned out to be the idiot stranded on a back road.

"Is the car broken?" James asked for what had to be the ninth time from the back seat.

"The car's not broken," Sandy lied. She stared under the hood like she'd actually be able to see a problem if it wasn't something like the entire engine being on fire. "It's just… taking a nap."

"Oh." James seemed to think this was an acceptable answer. "Why's it napping?" He persisted.

Sandy laughed and stepped away from the hood. "Kiddo, I wish I could tell ya." She retreated back to the side of the car and leaned against the driver's side door.

She kept her eyes trained on the curve down the road, vaguely hoping that whoever came down next had the sense to take the turn slowly. She was barely on the shoulder of the road but really not in the mood to push the car somewhere more out of the way, so it would have to work for the time being.

Anyway, it wasn't like anyone had driven down the road for the past half hour, so she didn't have much to worry about on that front. Getting home, though… that was going to be more of a problem.

"I'm hungry," James said for what also had to be the ninth time, and Sandy winced.

"We'll get ya something soon," she promised resolutely but probably untruthfully.

Technically, James had eaten lunch maybe two hours ago, but in four-year-old time that might as well be days, and Sandy didn't know what she was supposed to do short of giving James permission to eat the peanut he'd victoriously plucked off the car floor a few minutes ago.

Sandy considered walking to the nearest house to call for help, but she realized she didn't exactly have a ton of people to call. She guessed she could ask her mom, but she wasn't a masochist, so she wasn't going to do that, and Annie didn't have a car, so she was batting zero on that front. She was actually starting to consider calling Evie when she heard the tell-tale crunch of tires on the road.

Sandy silently prayed that whoever owned the car was willing to help and also not a serial killer as a worn truck came into view. She furrowed her brow and squinted at the truck as it started to slow down.

As the driver came into view, Sandy's heart lurched in her chest.

In the back seat of her car, James sounded delighted at this turn of events. "A truck!" He pointed exuberantly down the road, and Sandy sighed.

"Yeah, kiddo," she said in an effort to appease his enthusiasm, but it came out sounding dull, and James furrowed his brow.

The truck stopped beside Sandy's indisposed car, and to her credit, Sandy awkwardly stood her ground instead of making a run for it as she saw Sodapop Curtis through the sideview mirror. She wracked her mind for things to say that would not make this excruciating for everyone involved.

After a beat of awkward quiet, Sodapop spoke up. "Car trouble?" He offered an amiable smile but sounded cautious.

Sandy had to wonder why he hadn't just kept driving. He was well within his rights to do so, and it would probably spare them both the pain of what would follow. Before she could formulate something to say that wasn't painfully awkward, James cut in. "It's takin' a nap," he said helpfully, and Sandy winced.

"It's just, uh, being difficult. I'm sure it's fine," she corrected.

Neither Sodapop or James seemed satisfied with this assessment. The former gave a minuscule frown, while the latter shook his head vehemently. "There was this noise, an' then it stopped driving, an' then we sitted— we sat here for _years—_ "

Sandy realized with a pang of guilt and hurt and other things she didn't have a right to be feeling that Sodapop was looking past her at the child in the back of the car. "It's only been a few minutes," she spoke over James apologetically, and she couldn't quite meet Sodapop's eye but she saw him crack a smile in the four-year-old's direction before sparing her a questioning glance.

She looked between Sodapop and James and wanted to cry.

Instead, she swallowed hard and avoided Sodapop's gaze. "This is James," she said softly.

"Hi." James waved both hands with unabashed enthusiasm.

"Hi," Sodapop echoed, eyes creased with a smile that was more genuine than courtesy required. "Mind if I take a look at your mama's car?"

Sandy bit her lip and watched James furrow his brow. "'S my car," he declared after a beat, patting the side through the window, and Sandy would have been affronted if she hadn't been in such a state of shock. James watched Sodapop beseechingly. "Wake it up?"

Sandy shook her head frantically. "God, you don't have to-"

"Can't hurt," Sodapop shrugged good-naturedly but hesitated before he got out of the truck. "So long as you're okay with it?"

And, God, he was really asking if _she_ was okay with him fixing her car, and she wanted to cry again, because the longer she was back the more clear it became that she'd never deserved Sodapop in the first place. The fact that after everything she'd put him through, when he saw her on the side of the road he offered to help felt like a knife in the gut.

She swallowed hard, and because she certainly wasn't in a position to be refusing his help, she bit her lip and nodded, and Sodapop climbed out of the truck.

Something in Sandy stung with five years worth of _what if_ 's as James tracked Sodapop's approach to the car with wide eyes. She kept her eyes trained on the child in her car and ached for something she'd decided a long time ago she couldn't have. A fragile quiet fell over the group as Sodapop tinkered with something under the hood, and Sandy didn't have the courage or the energy to break it.

James, bless his allergy for subtext, picked up her share of the conversation. "I like your truck," he said plainly.

A muffled laugh sounded from under the hood. "Ya like the rust on it?" Sodapop asked.

"Yeah," James shrugged obliviously, eyes straining out the window to catch a glimpse of whatever it was Sodapop was doing under the hood. After a beat, he turned to Sandy beseechingly. "Can I go out?"

Sandy exchanged a painful glance with Sodapop and sighed before opening the door. James scampered out of the car and relished in his newfound freedom as he hurried over to inspect the hood. Sodapop, to his credit, took this in stride and offered a good-natured smile as James watched with comically wide eyes.

Sodapop emerged from the hood with grease on his hands and turned his gaze to the child underfoot. "Ya like cars?" he asked lightly.

"Yeah," James shrugged and frowned thoughtfully. "Not… this one."

Sandy didn't have the energy to take offense, but Sodapop laughed heartily. "It ain't a bad car," he assured the four-year-old, but James still looked dubious. "Anyway, blue's a pretty cool color for a car."

"Yeah," James conceded this point and let the matter drop as something else grabbed his attention. "Is it fixed?"

"Should be for now, yeah," he said and then turned to Sandy. "Just a faulty spark plug, but this fix probably ain't too permanent, because it's pretty old, so ya might have to look into it."

Sandy nodded and tried to hide her cringe. She couldn't remember the last time she'd willingly taken her car to have anything fixed. "I… Thank you. Really," she said lamely. "You didn't have to stop."

Sodapop shrugged. "This is kinda what I do," he laughed. "Seein' an easy fix on the side of the road is like Christmas after the day I've had."

Sandy laughed softly. "Then I can't imagine the day you've had," she said and glanced down at James, who had an arm wrapped around her leg. "Anyway, no one enjoyed this more than he did."

Soda glanced down at the four-year-old who watched as attentive as ever and offered a smile. "You should bring him by the DX sometime," he said, and Sandy's breath would have caught if she'd been breathing in the first place. If Soda noticed her panic, he didn't comment. "Kid deserves to see some real cars," he continued.

"I got a real car," Sandy mumbled, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle.

"You should probably bring it in, anyway," Sodapop said, and Sandy winced. "Shouldn't be too much trouble," Soda assured her, and Sandy didn't know how to tell him that the repairs were the farthest thing from her mind right then, so she offered a polite smile.

"I'll do my best not to mess anything up until then," she promised.

"I can follow behind in case-"

"-'S alright ," Sandy assured him quicker than she probably should have, because she knew herself well enough to realize that driving for any amount of time with Sodapop following behind couldn't end in anything but carnage. "I'll be off the back roads soon, anyway. And I- thank you."

Sodapop seemed hesitant, but he nodded. "Good luck, then." He looked down at James. "Nice meetin' you," he said with a smile that made Sandy's chest hurt.

James smiled back and Sandy wondered how she'd never seen the resemblance before. She realized that she probably wouldn't be the only one and wanted to drive back to Florida, faulty spark plug be damned.

Sandy exchanged stilted goodbyes with Sodapop and wrangled James back into the car, where he was miraculously free of the hunger that had plagued him earlier and instead newly fascinated with the sounds the motor made.

"Can I see the cars like he was talkin' about?" James asked with a blissful excitement.

Sandy sighed. "I'll do my best," she said, and she would, she knew, but she wished she didn't have to.

It was a quiet ride back.

 **. . .**

Sandy's shift at Rosie's later that day was a vast improvement from earlier, but that wasn't saying much at all.

She and Annie had fallen into a hectic rhythm over the past few weeks, and Sandy was starting to get more familiar with some of the regulars which made the nights infinitely more tolerable. Anyway, she'd already run into most of the people she'd been trying to avoid, so there wasn't much left to dread for the night.

Then, she had a habit of speaking too soon on that front.

Sandy had just pulled out of the driveway after dropping Annie at the Matthews' house when she saw Evie.

The first thing she noticed was that Evie was sitting on the porch of her childhood house. A distant part of her was surprised that Evie still lived on this street, that she hadn't fled from her folks' home in the five years Sandy had been away. She definitely hadn't seen Sandy yet, and Sandy figured she was well within her rights to continue on her way without acknowledging the girl given the volatile nature of their relationship lately.

The second thing she noticed was the tear tracks on Evie's cheeks, though, so the option to move on dissipated pretty quickly.

Sandy didn't have time to reflect on her laughably poor parking job or the fact that she'd left the driver side door wide open before she was standing at the bottom of the porch stairs facing Evie Ross at her most bitter and vulnerable.

Evie watched her approach with a carefully derisive expression, but the effect was lost behind the tear tracks on her cheeks. "What are you doing?" She asked tiredly.

Sandy realized she had no idea.

"Old habits," she said. Evie had a cigarette in her hand, and the smoke hung like a question over the decrepit porch stairs. "Mind if I sit?"

Evie glared, and Sandy knew that was as close to a yes as she was going to get. She left a few inches between her and Evie, and winced at the acrid smell of cigarette smoke. She thought it was fitting that Evie still smoked when she was upset and she still hated the smell. If Evie noticed her wince, she didn't react.

Sandy tried not to glance back at the house. "Your folks home?" Evie scoffed, and Sandy realized she'd already known the answer anyway. She bit her lip. "Do you…" she hesitated, but Evie didn't look up. "Do you want me to call Steve?"

Evie scoffed again, and Sandy thought she was probably a terrible person for being relieved. "What can I do?" She asked after a moment.

There were tears sliding down Evie's cheeks again, but she laughed softly. "I'm gonna be mean to you for the next few minutes," she said, and Sandy nodded. "'Cause right now I trust you to take it."

Sandy could only nod again, feeling uncannily like she was sixteen and ditching her fifth hour class to be here.

She watched Evie take a shuddering breath and turn her gaze to the cracked paint of the porch stairs. "I hated you," she said plainly, and it stung, but Sandy knew that wasn't what this was about. Evie didn't look up. "For a long time, I hated you," she continued.

She had mascara smeared under her eyes, and it was so uncharacteristic of Evie that Sandy thought it was almost the most shocking thing about any of this. Sandy watched her quietly, even though she knew the other girl wasn't going to meet her gaze.

"I hated you for going an' breaking Sodapop's heart and making the rest of us Greaser girls look just as bad as you, because of all of us, you weren't the one meant to do something as dumb as that, and I hated you for leaving me to clean up your mess, and I hated everyone who forgave you, because how can a person forgive something like that?"

Sandy swallowed but knew she couldn't say anything.

"But God, I—" Evie cut off and laughed. "You were my best friend. And if I can't forgive you for a dumb thing you did when you were sixteen, I don't know how I can forgive…" She cut off to take a drag of her cigarette.

Sandy watched her exhale cautiously. "Eve?" She said softly. "What happened?"

Evie shook her head. "Al's been declared MIA," she said, and of all the things Sandy had been expecting— " and Steve screwed some girl at the Dingo."

Sandy had whirled to face Evie, but Evie held up a dismissive hand.

"I don't need your sympathy," she said, and Sandy knew she never had, but God, if this was all Sandy could give Evie then she was going to.

"Evie, you're allowed to not be _okay—_ "

Evie shook her head. "I know that, Sandy, I just… I should be more torn up about Al, right? Because there are good men dying in Vietnam and I'm crying over a boy and I'm… I'm torn up over both things, I think, but right now it's… too much."

Evie took a drag of her cigarette and watched the fading skyline across the street. Sandy put a cautious hand on Evie's back and searched futilely for any words she could say to make this better.

"It's like, I hate Steve, and I hate the war, and I hate the fucking draft, and I just… I don't have the energy to hate you anymore."

Sandy closed her eyes for a second and sighed, because there was nothing she could say that would make Evie's words less true, make her eyes less desperate and her voice less broken. There was nothing she could say to make being cheated on or losing someone to a cause no one believed in anymore less terrible. She'd never been on the other side of either, and she didn't know Evie the way she used to, and she felt so lost for words that it would have been funny if it wasn't so horrible.

Evie glanced back at her for a second, and Sandy did her best to hide her doubt and hold her gaze before Evie looked away to wipe her eyes. "It's so shitty," she said, and Sandy was about to agree when she continued, "that I couldn't find it in me to forgive you until I needed you."

"Hey." She didn't have the words to express how profoundly wrong Evie was, so she met her gaze and did her best to hold it. "Shitty things have happened," she said, "but none of 'em were up to you. Steve and I— we did shitty things. The war's done shitty things. You ain't at fault for the way you react to them."

Evie tore her gaze away from Sandy's and watched the cigarette smoke drift away from the porch. Sandy looked straight ahead. A cicada chirped somewhere. The street was empty except for some kids playing ball a few houses down, and part of Sandy had to wonder whether they'd grow up and cry about their brothers going to war.

She didn't say anything; she wasn't sure there was much left to be said, and Evie sat beside her quietly until she'd almost finished her cigarette and the horizon was beginning to charcoal.

"I miss him," Evie said quietly, and Sandy knew there was a war in Vietnam, she did, but she thought of Sylvia's brother and Kathy's father and someone else's son and a part of her felt like there were battles being fought on every street back home, too.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she knew Evie hated apologies, but it was all she could say.

"I missed you, too," Evie said after a beat. Her voice was hoarse, and she still had tear tracks on her cheeks, but she laughed roughly. "I missed seein' you in the hallways at school an' sneaking into the Drive-in and listening to your shitty music in your room."

Sandy's chest hurt as she considered that.

She wanted to tell her that the hardest thing she ever did was realize that their friendship was going to become collateral damage in the mess she'd made with Sodapop. She wanted to tell her how much she'd missed her god-awful singing and wild laughter. She wanted to tell her how close she'd come to making the call from Florida and baring her soul. She wanted to tell her how proud she'd been when she heard that Evie walked across the stage at graduation without her.

Sandy wanted to tell her everything, but she knew she'd never have the words.

Instead, she laughed. "You wouldn't miss my shitty music if you saw some of my new albums," she said, and Evie didn't respond, but she laughed back and put out her cigarette, so Sandy was pretty sure she got the message.

Evie had run out of tears and they'd both run out of words, but they sat on the porch until a dusting of stars appeared above them and it got harder to hide their shivers. As she stood up, Sandy remembered that Evie never said goodbye to someone who understood that they'd see each other again. She walked around her car to the driver's side door and waited.

Evie hesitated at the cracked door and turned around to offer a rough nod. Sandy climbed into the car and turned her volume just loud enough to be heard from the empty street.

Neither of them said goodbye.

* * *

 _Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head_

 _And pretend that he just doesn't see?_

 _The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind_

 _The answer is blowin' in the wind_

Bob Dylan, _Blowin' in the Wind_

* * *

 **A/N: Alright, so I know it's been forever, and I want to say how genuinely sorry I am; for a while, I thought I was just not going to finish this story, and it's the literal dumbest thing because all that changed that was listening to an old Dylan record on vinyl, which... is the Worst.**

 **Anyway, though, I've had a lot going on and if anybody is still reading this story please know that the hiatus doesn't make the feedback and readers for this story any less amazing- I appreciate every one of you more than I can say!**

 **So after all that, I can safely say I'm always going to return to this story, even if it takes me way too long, because I want to tell it. So thank you for sticking with me, and know that there's going to be a next chapter and a chapter after that because you guys are amazing and I'm too invested in these characters not to return to them. ;)**

 **Thank you so, so much for reading, and until next time!**


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